by Robin Hobb
He regarded me with worry. ‘How do you know?’
‘I feel it. Per, he scares me.’
My anger is not for you. I felt as if my body vibrated to that immense thought. I gripped Per’s hand so tightly he exclaimed in surprise. I heard what they said. They enslaved a serpent and kept it in misery to make a foul potion.
They did. Vindeliar drank it. Then he could make people do as he said. I was shaking all over. I wanted not to feel his immense anger. My sadness already filled me. There was no room for his fury. I tried to placate him. Per killed him. Per killed Vindeliar, and I killed the woman who gave it to him.
But my thoughts didn’t quench his anger. Like oil on flames, I’d fed his fury. Death is not enough punishment! He took it, but others made it. Yet avengers come. I do not wish to leave until I see Clerres toppled to rubble. I will not flee like a coward!
I heard Per gasp. I heard shouts from crewmen but what I felt drove all other sensations away. I fell to the deck as a great emotion rippled through the ship. The deck did not rock and heave; still I clung to the planks fearing that what I felt would be enough to throw me into the sky.
‘He’s changing!’ someone shouted, and Per gave a wild, wordless cry. Under my hands, the planks of the deck lost their grain and became scaly. A terrible dizziness whirled through me and heaved my empty stomach. I lifted my head, sick with terror. Where my father’s form had been, two dragon’s heads now wove on long, sinuous necks. The larger one was blue, a smaller one green. The blue one swivelled to look back toward us. His eyes spun, orange and golds and yellows mingling in pools like molten metal. He spoke, his reptilian lips writhing back from white pointed teeth. ‘Per! Avenger of serpents and dragons!’
I was still on my hands and knees. Per was looking up at the figurehead, his teeth bared in a smile, or a grimace of terror. I heard running footsteps on the deck behind me and Lant abruptly pulled me to my feet.
‘There you are! I was so … Bee, come with me. We need to get you out of the way!’
I bristled, but Per said, ‘I’ll take her to the cabin.’ He pulled me away from Lant, who was gaping at the figureheads, and led me across the deck, dodging running sailors. I let him lead, paying no attention to where we went or how. Disaster was in the air. I wondered if I would ever be safe again. If I would live through the day.
Per tried to deny it as he opened the door to a small, tidy chamber. ‘We’re going to get away, Bee. Once we are out of the harbour and the sails fill, we’ll be clear. Paragon flies through the waves. No one will be able to catch us.’
I nodded, but did not feel any relief. The ship’s passions sliced through me like broken pieces of bone in my flesh.
‘Just sit here. I wish I could stay, but I have to go help,’ he told me. He backed toward the door, patting the air with both hands as if that would calm me. ‘Just stay here,’ he begged me, and shut the door as he left me there. Alone. I swayed where I sat. I could feel the ship resisting his crew. They wished to flee; he did not.
It was a small cabin. Untidy, but not dirty. A small window. Two stacked bunks and a single bunk. A woman’s clothing scattered on the floor. An array of items set out on both lower bunks.
I sat down on the bed, pushing aside a shirt to make room. Buck-blue, my father called this colour. When I moved it, a faint fragrance awoke as three candles tumbled from inside it. Battered candles, impregnated with lint and dust, and cracked. But I knew my mother’s work. Honeysuckle. Lilac. The little violets from our stream that fed the Withy River. I gathered them into my father’s shirt as if I bundled a baby. I held them and rocked. Were they all I had left of my parents? A strange piece of knowledge grew in me. I was an orphan now. They were both gone. Gone forever.
I had not seen him dead, but I felt him dead in a way I could not define. ‘Wolf Father?’ I said aloud. Nothing. The loss struck me with numbing force. My father was dead. He had journeyed for months to find me, and we’d had less than half a day together. All that was left to me were the things he had carried so far with him, things he had judged necessary. Such as my mother’s candles.
I looked at what he had brought. I wiped my face on his shirt. He would not have minded that. I moved a pair of weather-stained trousers and saw a familiar belt beneath it. And beside it, my books.
My books?
That startled me. My journal of my days and the dream journal of my nights. He’d found them, in my hiding-place behind his study wall, and he’d carried them all those days. Had he read them? The dream journal fell open to the dream of the candles. I looked at the picture I’d painted so long ago, then let my eyes wander to the candles beside me. I understood. I closed that book and picked up my journal. I read a page, then two, and closed it. It wasn’t mine any more. It had been written by someone I had once been, but would never be again. I suddenly understood my father’s compulsion to burn his work. Those daily musings belonged to someone else, someone who was just as gone as my mother and now my father were. I wanted to burn both books, give them the funeral pyre I’d never given my parents. I would cut a lock or two of my hair for that vanished child and the man who had tried to be a good father to her.
I looked at the other items scattered on the bed beside me. These were his things, I suddenly knew. Little knives and vials; his killing things. Several small pouches. I smiled. I’d killed with less. And he had been proud of me.
I was terribly tired but the feelings of the ship kept washing against me in unpredictable waves. I knew I needed to sleep, and knew also that I could not. Wolf Father would have told me to rest as best I could.
I took the bundled candles and clambered onto the upper bunk. I lay down but my head hit the pillow with a thud. I sat up and pushed it aside. Under a nightshirt was a glass container of something. I picked that up; it took both my hands to do so. It was heavy and when I tipped the container the contents shifted, moving lazily, swirling shades of grey and silver, twisting and twining. My heart sped up. I couldn’t look away from it. Something in me knew this stuff, and something in it knew me. Even through the walls of the container, it reached for me and I could not help but reach back.
As I unwillingly clutched the heavy glass tube, I felt flashes of the same hot madness as when I’d cut my feet in the serpent spit. That power lurked and called, just beyond the glass in my hand. I could seize this power. Open the glass, and drown myself in it, and I could be and do anything. I could be like Vindeliar and force people to believe whatever I wished. With a convulsive shudder, I dropped it back onto the bed. I stared at it, tears forgotten. My father had carried that, had possessed that horrific thing. Why? Had he used it? Had he wanted that sort of power? I wiped my wet face on my father’s shirt. He was gone and I’d never know the answer to that question. I took the candles and threw his shirt over the glass container so I wouldn’t have to look at it.
I climbed down and sat on the lower bunk. I looked at my dirty feet and legs. I considered my hands, rough with work and dirty with soot. Buckkeep Castle. Would I have a place there? I could hear people running and shouting out on the deck. The motion of the ship had changed. Perhaps our time for stealth was over.
Then the ship roared—a wordless cry, of fear and outrage.
‘FIRE!’ That was a human cry and I sat up, my heart leaping into my throat. I peered out of the little window. Fishing boats surrounded us, but they were not fishing. They were lobbing things at our ship. I heard something break right below the window, the missile shattering as it hit. I peered out, trying to comprehend, and then I saw an archer stand up in one of the other boats. He drew back his bowstring, and another man lifted a flame to his arrow. In a heartbeat, it flew toward us. I could not tell if it struck our ship or not. Then flames leapt up across the little window, obscuring my view. I caromed across the room and flung open the door to the dim corridor. I heard the crew shouting.
‘They’ve chopped our anchor line!’
‘Fire destroys liveships! Put it out!’
‘Where
is Bee?’ Beloved’s voice No one responded.
‘Here!’ I cried out.
‘Bee! Bee!’ That was Per and he came thundering down the companionway toward me. ‘Ship’s on fire! We need to get you into a boat!’
‘And go where?’ I shouted back at him. ‘To shore? Those people will catch me and kill me!’ My premonition had been right. There was no safety on this ship. We had nowhere to flee. Per and I stared at one another. My heart was thundering in my ears.
A terrible scream, hoarse and deep, rang through the ship. Within the ship. Every plank in the ship screamed and it vibrated up through my bones. Worse was the surge of pain that the ship transmitted to me. Paragon was being burned alive. The pain was not a physical one, but the anguish of a lost chance. An end to his being a ship before he ever had a chance to be a dragon.
Per reached me, seized my wrist. ‘We’ll decide where to go after you don’t burn to death!’
I tugged free and turned back toward the cabin. ‘I’m not running. I have a different idea!’
I clambered onto the top bunk and took up the heavy container. Per stared at me. ‘I know how to use this,’ I told him as it began to whisper its promises to me. I wouldn’t let the Servants take me. I could command them to leap from their boats and drown, and they would do it.
‘What are you going to do?’ Per whispered in horror, then barked, ‘Don’t do it! Don’t do anything with that stuff. It will kill you! The Fool put some on his fingers and the Rain Wild folk said it would kill him …’
I pushed past him, the heavy glass cradled in my arms, and hurried toward the deck. His warnings didn’t apply to me, I was sure. I’d seen what Vindeliar did with the serpent spit. This was different. Stronger and purer. I wasn’t sure how to use it. Did I have to drink it? The Fool had put some on his fingers, Per had said. Did that mean I should put my hands into it? Dump it over my head?
I reached the short ladder that led to the deck. Before I could go up it, a man dropped from the deck, bending his knees deep to catch himself. He straightened and looked at me, pale-blue eyes in a soot-blackened and flame-seared face. He was a nightmare come to life, with the hair scorched back from his brow. He looked wide-eyed at what I carried and shouted up the hatch, ‘It’s here! She has it!’
Another man dropped down to crouch beside him. The side of his face was blistered and he carried one arm close to his chest. The flesh of that arm was a ruin of fat blisters and burned shirtsleeve. ‘Girl, I need that. Amber told me about it the night I rowed her into Clerres. It’s for the ship. He needs the Silver.’
‘Boy-O!’ Per exclaimed in horror as he dashed up beside me. I clutched the container close to my chest. It was singing to me. Power and strength. It was mine.
The ship roared again. It cascaded through the vessel and echoed in me. I could not find myself for his despair. I saw it mirrored on the faces of the men who had cornered me.
The man with the burned face spoke quickly in a shaking voice. ‘Fire’s spreading, Per. We can’t stop it. Whatever they’re using, water won’t quench it. You need to get the girl off the ship now. But that Silver stuff … I need it. For Paragon. He’ll sink here and be gone forever unless he can turn into dragons now. Amber told me where to find it. It’s the Silver Paragon was promised if he helped you.’
The other man held out his hands to me. ‘Please, girl. You can’t use the Silver; it’s poison to you. But it might be enough to let the dragons break free!’
If I kept it, I could make them obey me. All of them. I’d be like Vindeliar, but much stronger.
I’d be like Vindeliar …
‘Take it.’ I thrust the silvery tube at them. The burned man reached for it.
‘No,’ the other man said. ‘You get them off the ship. I’ll get this to Paragon.’
‘The flames,’ the burned man cautioned him. ‘Kennitsson, you’ll never get through.’
‘It’s Paragon. This is my family ship. Blood of my blood. I must.’ The man called Kennitsson grabbed the container, cradled it, and scampered up the ladder one-handed.
Another agonizing shriek split the air and raced through the bones of the ship. ‘Get up the ladder,’ Per ordered me, and I obeyed him as quickly as I could. I gained the deck and stood up into blowing smoke and falling ash. I looked up. Our furled sails were slowly burning, shedding fragments of ash and flaming canvas as they did. On one side of the ship, flame licked up in a wall. We would not escape that way. Smoke rose on every other side, and I had learned how quickly rising smoke could become a sheet of flame. My eyes streamed so that I could barely see.
A gloved hand seized my shoulder from behind. ‘Get to the boats!’ Beloved shouted in a gasping voice. ‘There’s no saving him. Oh, Paragon, my old friend.’
‘Amber! Where are my parents?’ the man with the injured arm shouted, and Beloved shook his head.
‘They ran toward the bow. Our attackers have been concentrating the fire there. Boy-O, you won’t get through the flames. They’re lost!’
But the man chased after his friend with the Silver. They ran forward. I saw them run, I saw them leap, and hoped it was a thin curtain of flames they penetrated and not an inferno. The keening of the ship filled my ears and my whole body. I shook with his fear and anger. This was how we would all end. I knew that as clearly as he did. All this I saw as I was dragged away by Beloved. He was stronger than he looked and, in a corner of my mind, I wondered if it was my dead father’s strength that he used.
We reached the other side of the vessel. He looked over the side through the rising smoke and swore. ‘They left us!’ Per exclaimed and coughed.
Beloved kept a grip on my shoulder. He wrapped his arm over his face and spoke through the fabric of his sleeve. ‘They had to, or the boat would have caught fire, too. They’re there, trying to wait for us, but we’ll have to jump and then swim. And the Servants’ boats are closing in on them.’
‘Lant?’ Per coughed. ‘Spark?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘I can’t swim,’ I said. Not that it mattered. I wondered if drowning hurt less than burning. Probably. But the fishing boats were still shooting arrows at our ships. Two of our sailors dashed up to join us, brandishing their swords futilely.
‘Do we jump?’ Per coughed. His eyes were streaming. The smoke had a terrible smell and flavour, like burning flesh. Like the body of the messenger my father and I had burned, so long ago.
Then something changed. The whole ship shuddered, like a horse shaking off flies. The deck began to buckle under our feet.
‘Jump!’ Per shouted, but gave me no time to obey. He seized me by the upper arm and dragged me away from Beloved. He did not give me time to clamber over the railing but pulled me over it, knocking my shins hard against the wood. Strange, how sharp that pain still was in the midst of everything else.
Beloved leapt with us, kicking and flailing as he fell. I saw his flying body for only an instant before the cold water closed over me. I hadn’t taken a breath and Per had lost his grip on me. I went down, into cold and sudden dark. The force of my plummet pushed water up my nose. It hurt. I gasped, took in water, and then closed my mouth tight. I hung in cold darkness. Kick, kick, I told myself. Paddle hands, do something. Fight to live. Wolf Father!
No. He was gone, with my other father, and I was alone. I had to fight. As a cornered wolf fights. As he had promised my father would fight. I kicked and slapped wildly at the water that held me. I hated it as much as I hated Dwalia and Vindeliar. And then, for an instant, my head bobbed above the water. There was no time to gasp before I sank again. Kick harder, slap harder. Again, I found light and the touch of air on my face. I spat and snorted water, battering my hands on the surface of the water viciously as I tried to stay above it. I gasped in air before a wave slapped me in the face.
Someone caught hold of my arm. I climbed up him like a frantic cat climbs a tree, with no thought that I was pushing him under as I thrust my head into the air. I took a deep breath, and someone
else caught hold of me and dragged me backwards. ‘Relax. On your back!’ a voice commanded me. The world around me was blurry. I could not relax but she held me on my back and the head that bobbed up beside me was Per. He spat, snorted, and caught hold of my arm. He drew himself closer to me. ‘Ant. Thank you.’
‘Kick!’ the girl said suddenly. ‘Kick hard!’
I blinked saltwater from my eyes. I was looking up. The ship seemed much larger from this perspective. Fire licked up his sides and the scorched rags of burning canvas drifted up into the morning on the hot air that rose from him. I heard the dismayed and angry shouts of sailors on the other anchored ships and twisted, fearing the flotilla of little boats that had attacked us but they seemed to be drawing back now, satisfied with their handiwork.
I was kicking my feet in imitation of Per and Ant and we were moving away from Paragon, but slowly. The ship towered over us, slowly turning in his own inferno. I saw two more people leap through flames to seek the dubious safety of the water. His slow wallow brought the twin dragon figureheads into view. They had been blue and green, but now both were scorched and burning. The wood seemed to fight the flames. Scorched black, the scales would suddenly reappear, blue or green, but the unquenched oil would ignite again and the flames would flare. Fire licked up the long necks: both heads were thrashing wildly. The foredeck was engulfed in flames. Even at this distance, I could feel the waves of distress from the liveship, and his trumpets of fury and despair echoed over the bay from the rounded hills behind the town.
A taller wave slapped over my face. I came up snorting and blinking water. As my vision cleared, I saw a flaming man leap onto the blue dragon. He clasped it around the neck and shouted something. He held aloft my father’s glass container. The dragon opened its jaws to accept it from the man. As he did so, the man fell from his perch into the sea. The blue dragon tipped its head back and closed its jaws. I saw a single silver shard fall from the dragon’s mouth.
‘Did it work?’ Per gasped.
‘Did what work?’ Ant demanded.
