Dragon Keeper

by Robin Hobb

  So Hest now greeted her blunt dashing of his hopes with only a small sigh. “Then we shall have to try again.”

  She quietly considered the weapon he had just handed her, and then, coldly, employed it. “Perhaps when I return from the Rain Wilds. To undertake such a journey while pregnant might endanger the birth. So I think we shall wait until I return before we make another attempt.”

  She saw her target quiver. His voice was stronger, touched with indignation as he demanded, “Do not you think that producing a son and heir is more important than this harebrained journey of yours?”

  “I am not sure that you think so, dear Hest. Certainly, if it were of the highest importance to you, you might make more frequent efforts in that area. And perhaps forgo some of your own journeys and late-night engagements.”

  He clenched his hands and turned away from her to stare out of the window. “I am only trying to spare your feelings. I am aware that well-bred women do not suffer a man’s needs willingly.”

  “Dear husband, do you infer that I am not ‘well-bred’? For I would agree with you. Some women of my acquaintance would think me absolutely ‘unbred’ were I to share the details of our private life with them.” Her heart thundered in her chest. Never before had she dared to speak so pointedly to him. Never before had she voiced anything that might be construed as a criticism of his efforts.

  The jab made him turn back to her. The daylight behind him put his features into darkness. She tried to read his voice as he said, “You would not do that.” Plea? Threat?

  Time to gamble. She suddenly had the feeling that she must risk it all now or concede defeat forever. She smiled at him and kept her voice calmly conversational. “It would be easiest not to do that if I were away from my usual companions. If, for instance, I went off on a journey to the Rain Wilds, to observe the dragons.”

  There had been a few times in their marriage when they had dueled like this, but not many. Even fewer were the times when she had won. Once, it had been over a particularly expensive scroll she had purchased. She had offered to return it and let the seller know that her husband could not afford it. Then, as now, she had seen him pause, calculate, and then revise his opinion of her and his options. He canted his head as he considered her, and she wished suddenly that she could see his face more clearly. Did he know how uncertain she felt just now? Could he see the timid woman cowering behind her bold bluff?

  “Our marriage contract clearly states that you will cooperate in my efforts to create an heir.”

  Did he think he had her at a disadvantage? Did he think her memory was not as good as his? Foolish man! Anger made her bolder. “Was it worded that way? I don’t recall you speaking it aloud in quite those words, but I am sure I can consult the official document if you wish me to. While I am consulting with the Document Keeper, I can also look up the proviso in which you promised I should be allowed to go on a journey to the Rain Wilds to study the dragons. That clause I do recall, quite clearly.”

  He stiffened. She had gone too far. Her heart began to hammer. Hest had a temper. She’d seen it taken out on inanimate objects and animals. But she did not think that precedent made her safe from it. Doubtless he classified her with both those things. His face reddened and he bared his teeth. She stood stock-still, as if he were a rabid dog. Perhaps that stillness helped him to gather some control of himself. When he spoke, his voice was low and tight. “Then I think you should go to the Rain Wilds.”

  And then he simply left the room, slamming the door so hard that the water leaped in the vase of flowers on her desk. Alise stood trembling and catching her breath. For an instant, she wondered if she had won. Then she decided she didn’t care. As she tugged the bellpull that would summon her maid, her mind was already busy with what she needed to pack.

  “YOU’VE RUINED THIS SHIRT.”

  Hest looked up from the desk in the corner of his bedchamber. His pen was still in his hand, his brow furrowed in annoyance at the interruption. “If it’s ruined, then it’s ruined. I don’t want to hear about it. Just throw it away.” He dipped his pen again and scratched away furiously at whatever he was writing. He was in a bad temper. Best to keep quiet and finish his unpacking for him.

  Sedric sighed to himself. There were days, he thought, when he could not imagine any better future than continuing to serve Hest. But there were also days, like today, when he wondered if he could tolerate the man for even another minute. He looked a moment longer at the scatter of careless burns across the blue silk of the sleeve. He knew just how the shirt had been ruined. A pipe, carelessly knocked out against the door of a carriage, and the flying sparks had flown back to burn the sleeve before Hest had drawn his arm back in. With his fingernail, he scratched at the fabric, and the small scorches became tiny holes. No. There was no way to salvage it. A shame.

  He well remembered the sunny day and the Chalcedean market where they had purchased the bolt of silk. It had been on the very first trading trip he’d made to Chalced with Hest. Going abroad to trade had been a heady experience for him. It had enhanced Hest’s status in his eyes to see how his friend and now employer moved so confidently and competently through the clatter and clutter of the foreign market. It had still been a dangerous venture then, two Bingtown merchants venturing into a market in the Chalcedean capital. The war was still fresh in everyone’s mind, the peace too new to trust. For every merchant anxious to capture a new market, there were two Chalcedean soldiers still smarting at how Bingtown had repelled their invasion and willing to settle the score with an unwary foreigner. Widows clustered to beg at the market outskirts routinely spat and cursed at them. Orphans alternated between begging for coins and throwing small rocks at them.

  For a moment he recalled it all, the hot sun, the narrow winding streets, the hurrying slave boys in their short tunics with dusty bare legs, the thick smell of harsh smoking herbs wafting through the open market, and the women, draped in lace and silk and ribbons so that they moved like small ships transporting mounds of fabric rather than people. Best of all, he recalled Hest at his side, striding along, his mouth set in a grin, his eyes avid for every exotic sight. He’d darted from one market stall to the next as if there were a race to find the most desirable goods. He did not let the awkwardness of his Chalcedean slow the trading process. If a vendor shook his head or shrugged his shoulders, Hest spoke louder and gestured more widely until he made himself understood. He’d bought the bolt of blue silk for a careless scattering of coins, and then hastened off, leaving Sedric to finish the transaction and hurry after him, the roll of azure fabric bouncing on his shoulder. Later that day, they’d visited a tailor’s shop near their inn, and Hest had ordered the silk converted to three shirts for each of them. The shirts had been ready and waiting for them on the following morning. “You have to love Chalced!” he’d exclaimed to Sedric when they picked them up. “In Bingtown, I’d have paid three times as much and had to wait a week for them to be finished.” And the fit of each shirt had been perfect.

  And now, two years later, the last of Hest’s blue silk shirts had been spoiled by careless ash. The last shared memento of that first journey together, gone. It was so typical of Hest. He was all passion and no sentiment. All three of Sedric’s blue silk shirts were still intact, but he doubted he would wear them again. Sedric gave a small sigh as he folded the shirt a last time and reluctantly consigned it to the discard pile.

  “If you’ve something to say to me, say it. Don’t moon about in here, sighing like a lovesick maiden in a bad Jamaillian play.” Whatever calculations he had been making had gone badly; Hest thrust the pages away from him, sending several wafting to the floor. “You remind me too much of Alise, with her reproachful glances and secret sighs. The woman is intolerable. I’ve given her everything, everything! But all she does is mope or suddenly announce she is taking more.”

  “She mopes only when you mistreat her.” The words were out of Sedric’s mouth almost before he knew he was going to say them. He met Hest’s f
linty gaze. There was a quarrel foretold in the lines at the corners of his eyes and the flat disapproval of his thinned lips. Too late for apologies or explanations. Once Hest wore that look the quarrel was inevitable. Might as well have his full say while he had a chance, before Hest riposted with his icy sharp logic and cut his opinion to shreds. “You did promise Alise that she might go to see the dragons. It was in your marriage vows. You spoke it aloud and then you signed your name to it. I was there, Hest. You do remember it, and you do know what it means to her. It’s not some girlish whim; it’s her life’s interest. Her study of the creatures and her scholarly pursuit of knowledge about them are really all she has to take pleasure in, Hest. It’s wrong of you to deny that to her. It’s not fair to her. And it’s dishonorable of you to pretend that you don’t recall your promise to her. Dishonorable and unworthy of you.”

  He paused to take a breath. That was his mistake.

  “Dishonorable?” Hest’s voice was chill, disbelieving. “Dishonorable?” he repeated, and Sedric felt his breathing grow shallower.

  Then Hest laughed, the sound like a burst of cold water over Sedric. “You’re so naive. No. No, that’s not it. You’re not naive, you’re childishly obsessed with your idea of ‘fair.’ ‘Fair’ to her, you say. Well, what about ‘fair’ to me? We made our bargain, Alise and I. She was to wed me and bear me an heir, and in return, I let her make free with my fortune and my home to follow her obsessive studies. You’re privy to my finances, Sedric. Has she deprived herself at all in her pursuit of rare manuscripts and scrolls? I think not. But where is the child I was promised? Where is the heir that will end my mother’s carping and my father’s rebuking glances?”

  “A woman cannot force her body to conceive,” Sedric dared to point out quietly. Coward that he was, he did not add, “nor can she conceive a child alone.” He knew better than to bring that up to Hest.

  But even if he didn’t utter the words, Hest seemed to hear them. “Perhaps she cannot force herself to conceive, but all know that there are ways a woman can prevent conception. Or be rid of a child that doesn’t suit her fancy.”

  “I don’t think Alise would do that,” Sedric asserted quietly. “She seems very lonely to me. I think she would welcome a child into her life. Moreover, she spoke a vow to do all she could to give you an heir. She wouldn’t go back on her word. I know Alise.”

  “Do you?” Hest fairly spat the words. “Then how surprised you would have been had you heard our conversation earlier! She all but refused to do her wifely duties until she had made her trip to the Rain Wilds and returned. She blathered some nonsense about not wishing to travel while she was pregnant. And then put all the blame on me that she is not already pregnant! And threatened to shame me, publicly, for what she deems my failures!” He picked up an ivory pen stand from his desk and slammed it down. Sedric heard the ornament crack and silently flinched. Hest’s temper was roused now, and on the morrow, when he recalled how he’d broken the expensive stand, he’d be angry all over again. Hest hissed out a furious sigh. “I will not tolerate that. If my father offers me one more lecture, one more suggestion, about how to get that red cow with calf, I will . . .” He strangled wordlessly on humiliation. Hest’s clashes with his father had become more frequent of late, and every one of them put him in a foul temper for days.

  “That does not sound like the Alise I know,” Sedric said as he tried to divert the conversation. He knew he ventured onto dangerous ground when he did so. Hest was very capable of exaggerating, or slanting, a story to put himself in the right, but he seldom lied outright. If he said that Alise had threatened him, then she had. Yet that seemed at odds with all Sedric knew of her. The Alise he knew was gentle and retiring; yet he had known her to be very obstinate on occasion. Would her obstinacy extend to threatening her husband to force him to live up to his word? He wasn’t sure. Hest read his uncertainty in his face. He shook his head at Sedric.

  “You persist in thinking of her as some angelic girl-child who befriended you when no one else would. Perhaps she was, at one time, though I doubt it myself. I suspect she was just being kind to someone as friendless and awkward as she was herself. A sort of alliance of misfits. Or kindred spirits, if you would prefer. But she is not that now, my friend, and you should not let those old memories sway you. She is out to get whatever she can from our relationship and at as little cost to herself as she can manage.”

  Sedric was silent. Friendless and awkward. Misfits. The words rattled inside him like sharp little stones. Yes, he had been so.

  As always, Hest had told the truth. But he had a knack for studding it with tiny, painful but undeniably true insults. A memory rose, unbidden. A hot summer day in Chalced. He and Hest had been invited to an afternoon’s relaxation at a merchant’s home. The entertainment had consisted of a wild boar confined in a circular pit. The guests had been given darts and tubes to blow them from. The others had found great amusement in maddening the trapped creature, vying to stick the darts in its most tender places. The culmination of the diversion had been when three large dogs were set on the creature to finish it off. Sedric had tried to rise from his bench and move away. Hest had unobtrusively gripped his wrist and hissed at him, “Stay. Or we’ll both be seen as not only weak but rude.”

  And he had stayed. Even though he’d hated it.

  The way Hest now jabbed him with tiny insults reminded him of how he had helped torment the pig. Hest’s face then had had that same dispassionate but calculating look that it did now. Going for the tenderest flesh with tiny, sharp words. His sculpted mouth was a flat line, his green eyes were narrowed and cold, catlike as they watched him.

  “I wasn’t friendless,” he said quietly. “Because Alise was my friend. She came to visit my sisters, but she always took time to speak with me. We exchanged favorite books and played cards and walked in the garden.” He thought of himself as he had been then, shunned by most of the young men at his school, a source of bafflement to his father, a target for teasing by his sisters. “I had no one else,” he said softly, and then hated himself for how much those words betrayed about him. “We helped each other.”

  But the whispered comment seemed to have touched and softened something in his friend. “I’m sure you did,” Hest agreed smoothly. “And the little girl that she was then was probably flattered by the attention of an ‘older man.’ Perhaps she was even infatuated with you.” He smiled at Sedric and said quietly, “How could I blame her? Who wouldn’t have been?”

  Sedric stared at him, breathing quietly. Hest returned his gaze, unflinching. And now his eyes were the deep green of moss under shade trees. Sedric turned away from him, his heart tight in his chest. Damn him. What gave him such power? How could Hest hurt him so, and a moment later melt his heart?

  He looked down at his hands, still holding Hest’s blue shirt. “Do you ever wish it were different?” he asked quietly. “I am so tired of the deceptions and trickery. So tired of holding up my end of the pretense.”

  “What pretense?” Hest asked him.

  Sedric looked up at him, startled. Hest returned his gaze blandly. “If I had your wealth,” Sedric ventured. “I’d go somewhere else, away from everyone who knows us. And start a new life. On my own terms. Without apologies.”

  Hest spat out a laugh. “And very quickly there would be no wealth. Sedric, I’ve told you this before. There is an immense difference between having money and true wealth. My family has wealth. Wealth takes generations. Wealth has roots that stretch far and wide, and branches that reach out and twine through a city. You can take money and run away with it, but when the money is gone, you are poor. And all you have before you is the prospect of long years of very hard work so you can build a foundation for wealth for the next generation.

  “And that’s something I have absolutely no interest in doing. I like my life, Sedric. I like it the way it is. Very much. And that is why I do not like it when Alise proposes to upset it. I dislike it even more when you seem to think that’s acc
eptable behavior on her part. If I fell, what do you think would become of you?”

  Sedric found himself looking down at his feet as if shamed as he mustered the last of his courage to take Alise’s side. “She needs to go to the Rain Wilds, Hest. Give her that, and I think it will be enough to last her the rest of her life. One chance to be out in the world, doing things, seeing things for herself instead of reading about them in tattered old scrolls. That’s all. Let her go to the Rain Wilds. You owe her that. I owe her that, for wasn’t I instrumental in bringing her to marriage with you! Give her this small, simple thing. What can it hurt?”

  Hest snorted, and when Sedric lifted his eyes to look at him, his face was set in mockery, and his eyes were green ice. Sedric reviewed his own words and saw his mistake. Hest never liked to hear that he owed anyone anything. Hest rose from his desk and paced a turn around the room. “What can it hurt?” he asked, in a voice that mimicked Sedric’s. “What can it hurt? Only my wallet. And my reputation! My pride, too, but I suppose that is nothing to you. I should let my wife go traipsing off to the Rain Wilds, unaccompanied, on some crackpot mission to find an Elderling hiding under a rock or to save the poor crippled dragons? It’s bad enough that she spends every spare hour of her day immersed in such idiocy; should I let her make her obsession public?”

  Sedric kept his voice reasonable. “It’s not an obsession, Hest. It’s her scholarly interest . . .”

  “Scholarly interest! She’s a woman, Sedric! And not a particularly well-educated one! Look at the schooling she received, sharing a governess with her sisters! A cheap governess, probably couldn’t teach them much more than how to read and do arithmetic and embroider little flowers on scarves. Just enough education to get her into trouble, if you ask me! Just enough to make her give herself airs about being a ‘scholar’ and think she can buy a passage on a ship and go off on her own, with no thought at all about propriety or her duties to her husband and family. And never a pause, I’m sure, to wonder how much such a frivolous trip will cost her husband!”