by Robin Hobb
“I’m tired of pretending!” Greft said. There was something so disillusioned and broken in his voice that for a moment pity for him swelled her heart. “I thought the Council was finally offering us a chance. I thought there was some sort of a future for me. That’s why I signed up. ” He looked around at all of them, and his eyes were accusing.
“I tried to make you all see how it could be. I tried to make you see we could change all of it. But some of you didn’t want any changes. ” He glared at Thymara. “And some of you just wanted someone to think for you and tell you what to do!” His accusing eyes came back to Boxter. Kase had stepped up behind his cousin. He’d put a hand on Boxter’s shoulder, but Swarge still hadn’t released him from his hug.
“Sa, how I tried!” Greft shouted the words up into the night. Then he glared at everyone again. “But none of you really listened to me. And then Jess told me why. Told me what a web of lies this whole thing was. Well, now he’s dead and gone, and I don’t think that was an accident. And I heard that some of the dragons were changing their keepers on purpose, had given them blood to make them change. But not Kalo, no. Not for Greft. Nothing ever for Greft. I took care of that monster. I hunted for him, I fed him, I groomed him, I scraped the filth off him. But would he give me one drop of blood, one scale? No. Not one drop to change me, not to put my body right, not to give me something I could sell to make a new life for myself. ” He looked around at them, self-righteous and angry. Blood was seeping from his scored flesh. Thymara guessed now that Kalo had seized him in his jaws and flung him, tearing his skin as he did so. It was only surprising that the dragon had not sheared him in two and eaten him.
Greft’s voice was suddenly calm and level. “I’ve known all my life that I wouldn’t get as much as anyone else did. Not respect. Not even time. People like me, like us, we die young. Unless a dragon takes us on and makes sure we don’t. I know that now. I heard Sylve and Harrikin talking about it in the night, talking about waiting now because they’d have maybe hundreds of years together, after their dragons changed them. But not Greft. Not for me. So I went tonight to take what should have been given to me. All the times I groomed him, fed him, you think he’d give me just one scale, just a few drops of blood. But no. No. ”
He sighed out through his nose and looked all around at every one of them. He shook his head slowly as he did so, as if he could not believe his bad luck or the harshness of fate that had doomed him to be here.
“I’m going to die,” he said finally. His tone made it their fault. “Things are starting to go wrong inside me. I can feel things going wrong. My gut hurts when I’m hungry and hurts worse when I eat. The shape of my mouth has changed so much that I can’t chew or even close my mouth comfortably. My eyes are dry, but I can’t close my eyelids all the way. Nothing simple is simple anymore. I can’t get enough air through my nose when I try to breathe, and when I breathe through my mouth, my throat dries out until it cracks and I spit blood. ” He looked around at them again and his eyes came to rest on Thymara. “That’s my life,” he said quietly. “Or my death. The death of someone who is changing, without a dragon to guide it. The death of someone who was born so Rain Wild touched that I can’t even live to be middle-aged, let alone old. ”
Suddenly he was standing alone in their midst, with no one touching him. When he walked away from them, people parted wordlessly to let him pass. Alise stooped down and picked up the small glass bottle that had been dropped. She looked at it, then glanced at Sedric in consternation. “It looks like an ink bottle,” she said.
Sedric shrugged. His mouth was pinched and his face pale. He looked sick. Carson moved closer to him. Alise slowly turned her gaze on Leftrin. “It’s not true, is it? The hunter lied to that boy, didn’t he?”
Leftrin looked at her for a long, silent time. He glanced around at the watching keepers. “Someone thought they could force me to do something like that. Because they knew about Tarman, knew how much wizardwood was in him. But I never agreed to it, Alise. I never agreed to it, and I never planned to do it. ”
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A small wrinkle had formed between her eyes. “That’s what he was talking about that day, wasn’t it? Jess, that day in the galley? He thought that Sedric and I were here to help you?”
“He had a lot of peculiar ideas. But he’s gone now, Alise, and what I’m telling you is true. I never agreed to smuggle dragon blood or parts. ” He looked at her and then added very quietly, “This I swear on Tarman. I swear it on my liveship. ”
For a moment longer, Alise stood uncertain. Thymara watched her. She glanced from Leftrin to Sedric and back again. Then, Alise hooked her arm through Leftrin’s and looked only at him. “I believe you,” she said, as if she were making a choice. “I believe you, Leftrin. ”
Day the 12th of the Gold Moon
Year the 6th of the Independent Alliance of Traders
From Detozi, Keeper of the Birds, Trehaug
To Erek, Keeper of the Birds, Bingtown
From the Rain Wild Traders’ Council in Trehaug to the Bingtown Traders’ Council in Bingtown, a sealed message with a full accounting of the expenses for the rebuilding of the mutually owned docks at Trehaug, with the Bingtown Traders’ share of the reconstruction carefully accounted. As always, swift payment is greatly appreciated.
Erek,
Reyall will be taking ship two days hence, on the 14th day of the Gold Moon, to return to Bingtown. Our family thanks all the bird keepers for their assistance in giving him time to return home for our days of mourning. I thank you especially for the understanding and kindnesses you have shown our family over the years. I will be sending with Reyall two fledglings that you may enjoy. Their parents are the most colorful in my flock, with feathers bordering on a true blue. They are healthy and while not as swift as some of the birds, they home to the coop without fail. I thought you might enjoy them.
Detozi
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHANGES
Sedric padded barefoot out onto the deck and stood looking around him. The dawn sky was still streaked with colors to the east. Overhead, it was wide and blue, with a faint rippling of very white clouds in the distance. The sky had never seemed so large to him. All was quiet and serene. The water around the anchored ship was as smooth as a pond. A little distance away, the dragons were still dozing; steam rose around them from the heated water. As he looked at them, he felt Relpda give a twitch of acknowledgment. Gently he withdrew his scrutiny. Let her sleep in the warm water while she could. Soon enough, all of them would have to move on.
He lifted his hand and touched the back of his head, his fingers following a line of scales down to the nape of his neck. “Copper,” Carson had told him last night. “Copper as a gleaming kettle, Sedric. I think that answers your question. If she were not guiding it or at least attempting to guide it, I don’t think you’d have that sort of a color on your scales. Mine are nearly colorless. ”
“I’ve noticed,” Sedric said. “Carson—” he began, but the hunter shook his head, his breath moving against the nape of Sedric’s neck as he did so. “Enough questions,” the hunter whispered. He’d kissed the top knob of Sedric’s spine there. “I don’t want to think of you changing into an Elderling. I don’t want to think about you outgrowing me, outliving me. Not right now. ”
The memory of that kiss put a shiver up Sedric’s spine. A moment later, arms enveloped him from behind and pulled him close. “Cold?” Carson asked by his ear.
“No. Not really,” Sedric replied. But he put his hands on Carson’s arms and pulled them more tightly around him as if he were putting a coat on. For a moment, they held that embrace. Then, with a sigh, Sedric released his grip and shook gently free of Carson’s arms. “Everyone will be waking up soon,” he apologized.
“I don’t think anyone much cares,” Carson said. His voice was so deep that Sedric had to listen carefully to catch the words. “Davvie and Lecter ar
e not exactly subtle, you know. I’ve had to speak to Davvie twice about keeping private things private. ”
“I’ve noticed,” Sedric said, but he did not lean back into Carson’s embrace. Instead he asked, “What’s to become of us?”
“I don’t know. Well, I do, a bit. I suspect you will become an Elderling. I see some of the changes in you already. The speed with which you’re scaling is increasing, Sedric. Your hands and feet seem longer and slimmer than they were. Have you asked Relpda directly if she is guiding your changes?”
“Not exactly,” he admitted. He did not want to bring the subject up with her. Did she completely recall how he had taken her blood that night? Sometimes she seemed like a sweet, simpleminded child, forgiving a wrong she did not completely understand. Of late, however, there had been a time or two when she had clearly shown him that she was a dragon and not to be trifled with. Did her memories begin with him awakening her by consuming her blood? Had she been aware of him even then, had hers been the prompting that made him taste it? Or would the day come when she recalled how it had truly come about, and would she then turn on him?
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“I’ve made such a mess of everything,” he said aloud.
“Are you and I a ‘mess’?” Carson asked him gently.
“No. ”
“You can be honest with me, Sedric. I know what I am, and that’s a simple man. I know I’m not educated or sophisticated. I know I’m not—”
“It’s what you are that matters, not what you’re not. ” Sedric turned to him. He glanced around, and even as Carson grinned at his caution, he turned back and brushed a kiss across the hunter’s mouth. It startled Carson as much as it delighted him. But when the hunter would have embraced him again, Sedric stepped free, shaking his head. “You are one of the few things in my life that is not a part of the mess I’ve made. I didn’t deserve you, and I don’t deserve you. Unfortunately for me, I do deserve to deal with most of the messes I’ve made. ”
“Such as?” Carson gave up his pursuit of him and folded his arms on his chest against the morning chill.
“Alise is angry with me, I think. She believes I lied to her about Leftrin. ”
“I think you might have,” Carson pointed out affably.
“I only repeated what Jess had told me, things I had every reason to believe were true. ”
“Perhaps if you’d talked to me first, I could have cleared that up for you. ”
“I was just getting to know you then. ”
“Sedric, my dear, you are still getting to know me. ”
“Look. The dragons are waking. ”
“And you’re changing the subject. ”
“Yes, I am. ” He didn’t mind admitting it. There were too many messes he never wished to discuss with Carson. Let him go on thinking he was a good person. He knew he wasn’t, and he knew Carson deserved better, but he could not bear to give him up. Not yet. Soon enough he’d be found out but not yet. He diverted his attention. “Sweet Sa, look at their colors. That warm water did something to them. ”
The dragons reminded him of geese or swans. Some were just waking. Others were stretching, opening their wings and shaking them. Droplets of water flew out from them, and the rising steam of the heated water made them look as if they were rising out of a dream. All of the dragons seemed larger this day, their wings stronger and longer. He felt a whisper of assent from Relpda. Warmth to make us grow, warmth to make us strong.
Suddenly she emerged from the throng of dragons, brighter than gleaming coins, shimmering with warmth.
You think pretty of me, she praised him. She opened her wings and held them wide so he could admire them. In the night, a tracery of black had developed on them. The patterns reminded him of ice spray on a cold windowpane. She suddenly beat them frantically. She did not lift off the water, but she “flew” over it to come to rest beside the barge looking up at him.
“I am so beautiful!”
“Oh, that you are, my lovely one. ”
“You were afraid in your dreams. Don’t be. I shall make you as beautiful as I am. ”
He leaned over Tarman’s railing, felt the presence of the ship against his belly as he did so. “Then you know how to shape an Elderling. ”
She preened the feathered scales of her wings. “It cannot be hard,” she dismissed his concern. Then she looked over her shoulder. “Mercor comes, with Kalo. Kalo has a grievance. Changes will be made today. Do not fear. I will protect you. ”
THIS WAS NOT the behavior of dragons, Sintara thought. Each dragon always acted on her own behalf. They did not descend in a swarm and impose their wills.
Except when they did. As once they had when they dealt with Elderlings. A memory unfolded in her mind. There had been agreements. Rules about the taking of cattle. Agreements about rolling in grain fields. Necessary rules that benefited all. Rules that even dragons had gathered together to create. The thought filled her with wonder. And nostalgia for better times.
She had secured a place at the edge of the warming platform and stubbornly refused to be budged from it all night. She had leaned against its comforting, healing warmth and felt the effects of it spread throughout her body. Heat and sunlight were important to dragons, as important as fresh meat and clean water. Since they had entered this tributary, her life had changed. Water was not some grainy, murky stew sucked out of a small hole in a riverbank. She could drink as much as she wished of the cool, sweet stuff. She could roll and bathe with no caution about her eyes and nostrils. She had felt her flesh fill out just with water.
And food. There was food in this river, small but plentiful, and it required some effort to catch it. It demanded a quick eye to pluck a fish from the water or a monkey from a low-hanging vine. But that was good, too, that satisfaction of winning the meat and gulping it down fresh and warm. This river of clean water was changing her.
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But last night’s warmth had changed her most of all. Sintara had felt things happening to her body as the water heated it, mostly in her wings. There had been a spread of warmth and sensation, as if they were plants taking up moisture and standing upright after a time of wilting drought. She opened them now and rejoiced in how the sunlight touched and rebounded from their blueness. She could see now how her blood pumped more strongly through them. She flapped them, once, twice, thrice and with a lifting spirit felt how they raised her body out of the water. They would not lift her into the sky, not yet, but it now seemed possible that some day they might.
She did not want to leave the comforting warmth, but they had all agreed in their long night talk that when morning came, they would confront the keepers. What Greft had done was unacceptable. Kalo should have killed him, she thought again. If he had killed him and eaten him, it would not have come to this. That a human had dared come among them by night, by stealth, not to serve but to take blood and scales from them, as if they were cows to be milked or sheep to be shorn, demonstrated how deeply flawed the relationship had become. It was time to end it, once and for all.
When they had left Trehaug, there had been thirteen dragons, for she had not counted Relpda or Spit as dragons then. Now fourteen gathered here still, despite the loss of Heeby. Fourteen dragons, all stronger and more capable than when they had left Trehaug. Fourteen dragons who would not be considered as anything less than dragons ever again.
They waded purposefully out to the barge in the strengthening dawn. She smelled smoke; someone on board had started a cook fire. On deck, Carson and Sedric looked down on them. The Bingtown man’s heart shone in his eyes as he smiled down on the beauty of his dragon. He, at least, had a proper attitude for a human to bear toward dragons.
“Awake and attend us!” Mercor trumpeted, shattering the quiet of the dawn. A flock of waterfowl, startled, flew up from a bank of reeds. Squawking, they fled upriver. Kalo set his shoulder to the barge and gave it a sudden shove.
“Awake!” he roared. The humans inside shrieked louder than the ducks, while the two men on deck clutched at the railing in fear.
“Patience, Kalo,” Mercor counseled him quietly. “You will frighten them witless and then we shall get no sense or satisfaction from them. ”
Perhaps that warning was too late, Sintara thought, for the humans came boiling out of the ship’s interior like termites from a crushed mound. The variety of sounds they made impressed her; some cursed, one wept, several were shouting, and the captain came out roaring threats at anyone who endangered Tarman. Alise was at his side, equally incensed. Waves of concern for her mate and the ship flowed off her wordlessly. No, Sintara thought. No, she hadn’t been mistaken. Despite the correctness of her attitude toward dragons, Alise was not a fit keeper or material for an Elderling. She had so quickly transferred all her loyalty to a human mate and a liveship. She watched the woman who had once professed to worship her as she ran her hands along the ship’s silvery railing as if she were soothing a flustered cat.
“Silence!” Leftrin roared at the humans on his vessel. Then he leaned over the railing and glared at Mercor. “If you’ve a problem with me or any of my crew, then speak it to me and hold me responsible. Touch my ship again, any of you, and I’ll put a harpoon in you. ”
“Have you a harpoon?” Mercor asked in such intense curiosity that Sintara heard someone, perhaps Thymara, give out a wildly nervous giggle before stifling herself.
The captain didn’t answer his question. “What is your grievance, dragon?”
“Last night, one of your company came among us as we slept and sought to do harm to Kalo. Not just harm, but to take from him blood and scales, to sell to other humans. ”
Leftrin didn’t dispute the truth. “It wasn’t me or any member of my crew. ”
“Greft is no longer my keeper!” Kalo roared this out. Sintara was ashamed for him. He did not cover the anger and hurt he felt. How humiliating, to admit that the human and his loyalty had mattered to him.
