by Robin Hobb
The long-ago horror of the star being cut into his chest was eclipsed by the memory of a thousand inky needle-pricks jabbing the same emblem into his hip. He began to tremble. Every plank in his body shuddered. The calm waters of the lagoon shivered against him.
‘Paragon. Steady, steady. It will be all right. Say nothing.’ Amber spoke swiftly, trying to calm him, but her words could not take away the ancient sting.
‘Star or not, I’m right. I know I am.’ The man in the boat below sounded very smug. ‘The chopped face is a dead giveaway. Moreover, it’s a liveship, same as I’ve always heard the tales say. Hey! Hey, ship! You were Igrot’s ship, weren’t you?’
The insult of that vile lie was too much to bear. Too often had it been flung at him, too many times he had been forced to mouth it for the boy’s sake. Never again. Never!
‘NO!’ He roared the word. ‘Not I!’ He snatched at the air in front of him, hoping that his tormentors were within reach. ‘I was never Igrot’s ship! Never! Never! Never!’ He shouted the word until it rang in his own ears, drowning out every other lie. Below and above and within him, he heard confused shouts. Bare feet thundered on his decks but he didn’t care any more. ‘Never! Never! Never!’
He barked the word out, over and over, until he could think of nothing else. If he never stopped saying it, then they could never ask him anything again. If they didn’t ask, he couldn’t tell. He could at least be that true to his word and his family.
They meandered down the street in easy companionship. The rain had eased and a few stars were starting to show in the deep blue edge of the sky. The taverns were setting their lanterns out. Candlelight glowed behind the shuttered windows of small homes. Brashen’s arm was across her shoulders, and Althea’s was about his waist. Their day had gone well. Divvytown seemed to have accepted them at their word. If the information they had gathered was confusing, it still confirmed one thing. Kennit would return to Divvytown. Soon.
Establishing that had required several rounds of drink at the final tavern. They were now making their way back to the ship’s boat. They had not yet decided whether to slip quietly out of Divvytown tomorrow, or to stay on, perhaps even await Kennit’s return. The chance of ransoming Vivacia seemed small; deceit seemed a likelier tack. There were too many possible courses of action. Time to go back to the ship and consider them all.
Foot traffic in the town dwindled as folk sought shelter for the night. As they wended their way down the wooden boardwalk, a couple ahead of them turned into the door of a small house and shut the door firmly behind them. A few moments later, dim candlelight shone from within.
‘I wish we were they,’ Althea observed wistfully.
Brashen’s stride checked, then slowed. He pulled her around to face him and offered quietly, ‘I could find us a room somewhere.’
She shook her head regretfully. ‘The crew is waiting down at the boat. We told them to be there by nightfall. If we’re late, they’ll assume something has gone wrong.’
‘Let them wait.’ He bent his head and kissed her hungrily. In the chill night, his mouth was tauntingly warm. She made a small frustrated sound. ‘Come here,’ he said gruffly. He stepped off the boardwalk into the thick dark of the alley and drew her after him. In the deep shadows, he pressed her back up against a wall and kissed her more leisurely. His hands wandered down her back to her hips. With abrupt ease, he lifted her. When his body pressed hers to the wall, she could feel the jut of his desire. ‘Here?’ he asked her thickly.
She wanted him but this was too dangerous. ‘Perhaps if I were wearing a skirt. But I’m not.’ She pushed gently away from him and he let her down, but kept her pinned against the wall. She did not struggle. His kiss and his touch were more intoxicating than the brandy they had shared. His mouth tasted of liquor and lust.
He broke the kiss suddenly, lifting his head like a stag at bay. ‘What’s that?’
It was like waking from a dream. ‘What’s what?’ She felt dazed.
‘That shouting. Do you hear it? From the harbour.’
The faint cries came to her ears. She could not make out the word, but with icy certainty, she knew the voice. ‘Paragon.’ She stuffed her shirt back into her waistband. ‘Let’s go.’
Side by side, they thundered down the boardwalk. There was no sense going quietly. Shouting was not unusual in a town like Divvytown, but eventually it would attract attention. Paragon was crying the same word over and over again.
They were nearly at the docks when Clef charged up to them. ‘Yer needed on ther ship, Cap’n. Paragon’s gone mad.’ He panted the words breathlessly and then they were all running together. As they clattered out onto the docks, Althea saw the crew of the ship’s gig waiting for them, as well as Lop. Jek had her knife out. ‘I’ve got the stuff you bought loaded, but we’re missing two men,’ she announced. The two former slaves were not there. Althea knew that no amount of waiting would change that.
‘Cast off,’ she ordered them tersely. ‘Get back to the ship, all of you. We’re leaving Divvytown tonight.’
There was a moment of shock, and Althea cursed herself for a drunken fool. Then Brashen demanded, ‘Didn’t you hear the mate’s order? Do I have to tell you myself?’
They scrambled down the ladder into the waiting boats. Paragon’s voice carried clearly over the water. ‘Never, never, never!’ his deep tones belled dolorously. Althea made out the shapes of two small boats near his bow. He’d attracted an audience already. Doubtless, the word would burn through Divvytown that the newcomers had arrived in a liveship. What would that convey to the pirate city?
It seemed to take all night to reach the ship. As they gained the deck, a scowling Lavoy met them. ‘I told you this was insane!’ he rebuked Brashen. ‘The damn ship has gone crazy, and your fool carpenter did nothing to calm him. Those louts in the boat below were bellowing that he was Igrot’s ship. Is that true?’
‘Hoist anchor and our sails spread, now!’ Brashen replied. ‘Use the boats to turn us about. We’re leaving Divvytown.’
‘Tonight?’ Lavoy was outraged. ‘In the dark on a lunatic ship?’
‘Can you obey an order?’ Brashen snarled at him.
‘Maybe if it made any sense!’ Lavoy retorted.
Brashen reached out and seized the mate by the throat. He dragged him close and snarled into his face. ‘Make sense of this. If you won’t obey my orders, I’ll kill you now. Last chance. I’ve had it with your insolence.’
For an instant, the tableau held, Brashen’s hand on Lavoy’s throat, and Lavoy staring up at him. Brashen had height and reach over Lavoy, but the mate had wider shoulders and a deeper chest. Althea held her breath. Then Lavoy lowered his eyes.
Brashen released his throat. ‘Get to your task.’ He turned away.
Like a snake striking, Lavoy pulled his knife and sank it into Brashen’s back. ‘That for you!’ he roared.
Althea leapt to Brashen as he staggered forwards, eyes clenched against the pain. In two strides, Lavoy reached the railing. ‘Stop him! He’ll betray us!’ Althea ordered. Several crewmen sprang after him. She thought they would seize him. From the corner of her eye, she saw Lavoy leap. ‘Damn!’ she cried, and turned. To her horror, the other men who had sprung towards him were following him over the side. Not just the Tattooed ones from Bingtown, but other crewmen as well, leaping over the railing after Lavoy as if they were fish heading up a spawning river. She heard the splash of swimmers below. Lavoy would betray them in Divvytown. The loyal crew gaped after them.
‘Let them go,’ Brashen commanded hoarsely. ‘We need to get out of here and we’re better off without them.’ He let go of her and stood straight.
Incredulously, she watched Brashen reach over his shoulder. With a tug, he freed Lavoy’s knife from his back. He flung it down with an oath.
‘How bad is it?’ Althea demanded.
‘Forget it for now. It didn’t go deep. Get the crew moving while I deal with Paragon.’
Without waiting for
her reply, he hastened to the foredeck. Althea was left gaping after him. She caught her breath and began barking out orders to get the ship under way. Up on the foredeck, she heard Brashen give one of his own. ‘Ship! Shut your mouth! That’s an order.’
Astonishingly, Paragon obeyed. He answered both his helm and the tug of the small boats as the men below rowed frantically to bring the ship about. The sluggish flow of the lagoon was with them, as was the prevailing wind. As Althea sprang to her own tasks, she prayed that Paragon would keep to the channel and take them safely down the narrow river. Like an opening blossom, their canvas bloomed in the night wind. They fled Divvytown.
15
SERPENT SHIP
THE WHITE SERPENT fluctuated between sullen and sarcastic with no relief for anyone. He refused to give his name. Names, he said, no longer mattered to dying worms. When Tellur pressed him for a name to call him by, the white finally snapped, ‘Carrion. Carrion is the only name I need, and soon enough, it will be your name as well. We are dead creatures that move still, rotted flesh that has not yet been stilled. Call me Carrion, and I will call each of you Corpse.’
True to his word, that was how he referred to them. It was a constant irritant. Sessurea wished they had never encountered the creature, let alone wrung the story of She Who Remembers from him.
No one trusted him. He stole food from the jaws of those who had captured it. With a sudden bite or a slash of his tail, he would startle the other serpents into dropping prey, and then seize it for himself. He let fish-kill toxin dribble from his mane as he slept. It was even more annoying because he slept in the middle of the tangle. Maulkin gripped him as they slept, lest he try to escape in the night.
By day, they had to follow him. Again, he found every conceivable way to irritate the rest of the tangle. He either dawdled, pausing often to taste the current and wonder aloud if he knew where he was going, or he set a demanding pace and ignored all protests and requests for rest. Maulkin always shadowed him, but it took a toll on him. Seldom a tide passed that Carrion did not provoke Maulkin to kill him. He struck insulting poses, he leaked venom constantly and showed no deference to Maulkin. If the decision had been Shreever’s, she would have throttled the white serpent days ago, but Maulkin held back the full force of his fury, even when the miserable creature taunted him and mocked his dream, though he lashed the water furiously and his golden false-eyes gleamed like the sun above the sea. He would not tempt the white with threats; the creature longed too strongly for his own death.
His cruellest torment was that he held back the memories that She Who Remembers had given him. When the tangle settled for the night, anchoring themselves together, they talked before they slept. Bits of memories from their dragon heritage were brought forth and shared. Often what one lacked, another supplied, and so their memories were knitted up like threadbare tapestries. Sometimes the mere naming of a name could bring forth a cascade of forgotten fragments from another serpent. But Carrion always held back, smirking knowingly as the others groped through their weary thoughts. Always, it seemed, he could have enlightened them if he chose to. For that, Shreever longed to kill him.
The talk that night had strayed to the lands of the far south. Some recalled a great dry place, void of any substantial game. ‘It took days to fly over it,’ Tellur asserted. ‘And I seem to recall that when one settled, the sands were so hot that you could not stand upon it. You had to … to…’
‘Burrow!’ Another serpent broke in excitedly. ‘How I hated the grit under my claws and in the folds of my hide. But it was the only way. To land gently was wrong. You had to slide in, so that right away you broke the hot crust of the sand and found the cooler layer. Not that the cooler layer was much cooler!’
That sensory clue, grit in the fold of her skin, seized Shreever’s imagination. She not only felt the hot sand, but also tasted the peculiar bitterness of the region. She worked her jaws, recalling it. ‘Shut your nostrils against the dust!’ she warned them triumphantly.
Another serpent trumpeted excitedly. ‘But it was worth it. Because once you flew beyond the reaches of the blue sand, there was … there was…’
Nothing. Shreever keenly recalled the anticipation. Once the sands changed from gold to blue, you were nearly there, and beyond the blue sand was something worth the long, foodless flight, something worth risking the dangers of sandstorms to reach. Why could they remember the heat and the irritation of grit, but not the goal of the flight?
‘Wait! Wait!’ the white exclaimed in sudden excitement. ‘I know what it was! Beyond the blue sand was, oh, it was so beautiful, so wonderful, so joyous a thing to find! It was –’ He swivelled his head, his scarlet eyes swirling to be sure of every serpent’s attention. ‘Dung!’ he declared happily. ‘Great mounds of fresh, brown stinking dung! And then we declared ourselves the Lords of the Four Realms. Lords of the Earth, the Sea, the Sky and the Dung! Oh, and how we wallowed in our greatness, celebrating all we had conquered and claimed! The memory stands so clear and shining! Tell me, Sessurea Corpse, does not this of all memories stand out most clearly, most –’
It was too much. Sessurea’s orange mane lifted and he lunged at the white, jaws wide. Almost lazily, Maulkin rolled his body to come between them. Sessurea was forced aside. He would never challenge Maulkin, but he roared his frustration at the surrounding serpents, who gave him space for his wrath. His green eyes spun with fury, as he demanded, ‘Why must we tolerate this ill-begotten slime? He mocks our dreams and us. How can we believe that he leads us truly to She Who Remembers?’
‘Because he does,’ Maulkin replied. He opened his jaws, taking in seawater and pumping it out through his gills. ‘Taste, Sessurea. Your senses have become dull with discouragement, but taste, now and tell me what you scent.’
The great blue serpent obeyed. Shreever imitated him, as did most of the others. For a time, she scented only their own tangle, tasted only Carrion’s ever-dribbling toxins. Then it wafted to her, unmistakable for anything else. The taste of one who carried memories locked in her flesh floated faint in the water. Shreever worked her gills frantically, trying for more of the elusive flavour. It faded, but then a stronger drift reached her.
Tellur, the slender green minstrel, shot like an arrow towards the Lack. As he thrust his head into the night air, he bugled a questioning call. All around Shreever, the tangle rose faster than bubbles, to bob up around Tellur. Their voices were added to his, a seeking chorus. Suddenly Maulkin shot out of the water in their midst, leaping so high that nearly a third of his length arced above the water before he dived again.
‘Silence!’ he commanded when next he surfaced. ‘Listen!’
The heads and arched necks of the tangle rode on the breast of the waves. Above them, the cold moon gleamed and the stars shone white as anemones. All manes stood out full and taut. The surface of the sea was transformed into a meadow of night-blooming flowers. For a breath, all they heard were the sounds of wind and water.
Then, pure as light and sweet as flesh, a voice rose in the distance. ‘Come,’ she sang, ‘come to me and I will give you knowledge of yourselves. Come to She Who Remembers, and your past will be yours, and with it, all your futures. Come. Come.’
Tellur trumpeted an eager response, but ‘Hush!’ Maulkin bade him sternly. ‘What is that?’
For a second voice had lifted in song. The words were oddly turned, the notes shortened, as if the serpent who sang had no depth to its voice. But whoever she was, she echoed the call of She Who Remembers. ‘Come, come to me. Your past and your future await you. Come, I will guide you, I will protect you. Obey me and I shall see you safely home. Once more you shall rise, once more you shall fly.’
All heads, every spinning eye turned to Maulkin. His mane stood out stiff about his throat and venom welled and dripped from every spine. ‘We go!’ he trumpeted, but softly, to only his tangle, not to the siren voices. ‘We go, but we go with caution. Something is odd here, and we have been deceived before. Come. Follow me
.’
Then he threw back his great head and opened his jaws wide to the night. His golden false-eyes shone brighter than moon or sun. When he released the blast of his voice, the water all around him shivered at his power.
‘We come!’ he roared. ‘We come for our memories!’
He plunged back into the Plenty. He flashed through the water, and his tangle followed him. Alone, the white held back. Shreever, still not trusting him, glanced back.
‘Fools! Fools! Fools!’ Carrion trumpeted wildly into the night sky. ‘And I the biggest fool of all!’ Then, with a wild cry, he plunged in to follow them.
She Who Remembers left the ship to greet the others. Bolt urged her to remain, saying they would welcome them together, but she could not. This was her destiny, come at last to join her. She could not put off this long-awaited consummation. She arced towards them, leaping awkwardly in attempted grace. There was a terrible conflict between her stunted body and her ancient memory of other, similar meetings. She should have been twice the size she was, powerfully muscled, a giant among serpents, armed with enough toxins to stun tangle after tangle into complete remembrance of their heritage. She thrust aside all misgivings. She would give them all she had…It had to be enough.
When they were close enough to taste one another’s toxins, she halted. She allowed her body to sink beneath the water and finned there, awaiting them. The leader, a battered serpent that glowed with the fire of his false-eyes, came forwards to meet her fang to fang. The others fanned out around them with all heads aligned towards her body. Beneath the turbulence of the sea’s waves, all hung there, as motionless as swimming creatures can be as they held themselves in even spacing and careful alignment. They were many organisms, soon to be one, united in the racial memory of their kind. She opened her jaws wide, exposing her teeth in formal greeting. She shook her mane until the toxic ruff of spikes around her throat stood out in its full glory. Every spine was erect, swelling with the toxins she would soon release. Rigorously, she controlled herself. This was not the awakening of a single serpent. This was the resurrection of an entire tangle.
