by Robin Hobb
Sylve rested the small body on the railing as she folded the concealing rag back. Thymara found herself looking at a tiny creature who would have fitted in her cupped hands with room to spare. The little round head was tucked in toward her chest, and the tiny arms were folded tight to her chest. As Bellin had said, she had no legs, only a finned tail. Another partially formed fin was on her back. “She couldn’t have lived,” Sylve confirmed, and Thymara nodded.
Veras stretched her neck and Sylve reached out and, as gently as she could, rolled the child into the dragon’s mouth. Veras closed her jaws and immediately turned her head aside and wheeled away from the ship. It was done.
CARSON HAD DECIDED to act on the assumption that Greft was attempting to head back to Trehaug. “Where else could he go?” he asked Sedric. “He’s a man in failing health, alone. He doesn’t have a lot of choice. One of his options was to remain with us. He decided against that. He must have felt there was too much hostility for him to endure. That makes me wonder why he’d try to get back to Trehaug. I doubt he’d be treated any better there. He’s looking at traveling a long, hard way alone, to die among the people who rejected him in the first place. ”
Sedric nodded silently. He had a guilty theory of his own, one he kept to himself. He hoped he was wrong.
They had been backtracking through the reeds and shallow water, though how Carson knew where to go, Sedric could not have said. For days, the scenery had seemed unendingly the same to him. From time to time, Carson would say something like, “See, the dragons trampled that area flat when they came through here,” or, “Remember that stand of rushes with the three blackbird nests in a row? We passed that late yesterday. ”
They had come to an area of scrubby brush on stilt roots. There was no solid ground anywhere, but the feeble current pushed floating branches and twigs and reeds up around the stilt roots where they formed soggy mattresses of plant material. This seemed to be the favorite bedding spots for gallators. The immense, toothy salamanders dozed in clusters in such places, the pallid bodies marked with brilliant stripes of blue and red. The wet-skinned creatures had proven especially vulnerable to dragon venom. Just touching the moist skin of a gallator was death for most creatures, but the dragons ate them with no apparent ill effects.
This area Sedric did remember clearly. Yesterday, the dragons had preceded them, devouring a number of gallators and sending the rest into hiding. But today the dozing creatures did not flee; instead, they lifted their heads and regarded the small boat with hungry interest. Sedric glanced around for Spit, only to discover that this was the time when the dragon had chosen to lag behind. “Carson?” he hissed in quiet warning as two of the gallators launched silently into the water and vanished from sight beneath the surface.
“I saw them,” Carson replied as quietly. He lifted his paddle from the water, and Sedric did the same. “Hold tight. They may try to overturn us, but these boats don’t flip too easily. ” He glanced back at the lagging Spit and shook his head ruefully. “Little bastard is using us as chum, to lure the gallators away from cover. That’s nice, Spit, real nice. ” He took a slow, steady breath. “Hold tight to the seat, not the sides. You don’t want any part of your body outside the boat. Move as little as you can. The less alive and meaty we look, the better. ”
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Sedric quickly shifted his grip. They sat still, waiting. There was a tentative bump against the bottom of the boat. Sedric tightened his grip on the seat, felt his nails press against the hard wood. Carson was turned on his seat, watching him, a tense grin on his face. A short fishing spear was in his hand. Sedric moistened his lips and felt a second, harder bump, followed by a sideways push. Carson mouthed the words “Be still” at him. That wasn’t a problem. He felt too scared to move.
Then came an impact that lifted Sedric’s end of the boat out of the water. It settled with a splash and at the same moment, a gallator struck it from the side. The boat tipped far enough to ship some water, but righted itself. The gallator surged at the boat again but could not get its squat-necked head into it. Carson reared back and, with a huff of effort, sank the fishing spear into the thing’s neck. It gave a gurgled squeal and fell back into the water. The slime it had left on the side of the boat stank.
“Hang on TIGHT!” Carson’s terse warning came just in time. Sedric tightened his grip just as the boat was struck from the other side. His body whipped with the impact, and nearly slammed him against the toxic slime oozing down the side of the boat. A buffet of wind hit them, and then a tremendous splash of water. It soaked Sedric and added more water to what was already in the boat.
It took a few seconds for him to understand that Spit had been briefly airborne. The little silver dragon had actually managed a moment of flight before splashing down beside the boat and nearly swamping it. The cold water had driven the breath from Sedric’s lungs. He was still shuddering and gasping when Spit lifted a struggling gallator from the water and joyously sheared it in half. As the two bloody halves fell from his jaws, the dragon darted his head under the water and came up with a second gallator. This one he gripped by its head, and it thrashed wildly, showering water and toxins in a spray. Both Carson and Sedric cowered in the boat, covering their faces until Spit clamped his jaws and the creature stilled in death.
As they sat up cautiously, Spit wolfed down the body of the gallator and then nosed in the water until he came up with the severed halves of the first one. These he ate with evident enjoyment.
“You’re welcome,” Carson said sarcastically. “I always enjoy being the bait on a hook. ” But despite his words, Sedric could tell that the hunter was mildly amused by the dragon’s strategy and respected him for it. He was still shaking his head over this when Carson said in a low voice, “Oh, sweet Sa, no. I didn’t want to find him like that. ”
Sedric’s eyes snapped to his face, then he followed his gaze. There was Greft’s boat. It was not quite overturned, but it was tipped up against a tangle of brush. As one, they dug their paddles in and left Spit to his feeding.
Greft was in the boat still. He’d wedged himself in, and the gallators hadn’t managed to dislodge him. Some of the venom from a gallator’s skin had hit him. His arm was a swollen sausage flung across his chest. Sedric judged that he had tried to ward off a gallator attack and got the venom on his skin.
Carson gingerly grabbed the thwart and pulled the boat so it righted itself. “What a way to die,” he observed quietly.
As the boat rocked upright, Greft’s eyes slowly opened, seeming to fight an awful lethargy as he slowly turned his gaze on them. His face had puffed around his eyes, and he looked out at them from under a swollen brow.
Sedric stared in horror as Greft’s mouth moved. Words drawled out. “St-ole em frm er rm. ” The hand at the end of the sausage arm moved in a slight flipping motion, as if it would gesture at something. “S’all…gon naw. Din’ mek no-awn rich. ”
“It’s all right, Greft. It’s all right. ” Sedric kept his eyes on Greft’s face.
“Greft. You want some water?” Carson had opened his waterskin. Spit had appeared alongside the two boats. Sedric didn’t know if the dragon was keeping watch for gallators or hoping to eat Greft’s body.
Greft seemed to consider Carson’s question for a long time. Then, “Yeah,” he managed. Carson leaned across from one boat to the other and directed a tiny stream of water toward Greft’s mouth. Greft sucked at the water; then as abruptly as a falling leaf, his head slumped slightly. His eyes didn’t close, but Carson abruptly stopped the flow of water, stoppered the skin, and carefully restored it to its place in the boat. “He’s dead. The venom causes paralysis. Took a while to stop his whole body, but it did. Horrible way to die. ”
“Horrible,” Sedric agreed faintly.
“Well. Time to clean it up,” Carson said grimly.
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He lashed the two small boats together and poured wa
ter over the sides of both until he’d washed away as much of the gallator’s venomous slime as he could. Then he clambered over into Greft’s boat and straddling the body, matter-of-factly patted Greft’s pockets. He unbuckled the keeper’s belt and kept it and the sheathed knife on it. He hadn’t carried anything else that Carson considered worth keeping. “Help me with the body,” the hunter said, and Sedric didn’t ask questions. He took the feet and Carson took the shoulders. They lifted Greft up. Sedric gritted his teeth as the small boat rocked beneath them. The gallators had fled Spit, he hoped, but he still didn’t want to fall in.
They didn’t even have to put Greft over the side. Spit reached over and took the body in his mouth, then turned and stalked off with him. For a moment, Sedric watched the dragon wade through the shallow water. Greft’s head and feet stuck out either side of the dragon’s mouth. Greft’s head bobbed with every step that Spit took, almost as if he were nodding farewell to them.
When he looked back, Carson was crouched in the bottom of Greft’s boat. Like their own, it has shipped some water and he was bailing it out. As items scattered in the bottom of the boat emerged, he picked them up and set them on the seat to drain. There was a broken fishing spear. Carson looked at the snapped shaft and shook his head ruefully. “The head’s probably in a gallator on the bottom by now. ”
There wasn’t much to tidy. Greft had been a precise fellow. The same organization and stowing habits that had saved his gear during the wave had preserved it now. Carson opened his canvas pack, glanced inside, and said, “The ship’s bread is there, and mostly dry. ”
In the bottom of the boat was a sturdy cloth sack, drenched. When Carson picked it up, the chink of glass sounded inside it. “What on earth?” Carson muttered, and he untied the drawstring. Sedric’s heart sank. Greft’s last words had been clear to him. I stole it from your room. It’s gone now. Didn’t make anyone rich. He’d known immediately what the keeper was talking about. He hadn’t looked at his dragon parts in days, hadn’t wanted to gaze on the vials of blood or the scales he’d taken. He had hoped that Greft’s last words had meant he’d thrown them over the side or otherwise lost them. But as Carson pulled the glass ink bottles and the specimen pots out of the sack and set them in a row on the seat, Sedric saw what Greft had meant. They were empty. The bottle that had held the blood had a swirl of scarlet left in the bottom. When Carson tipped it, it was still liquid. The color in it still swirled, scarlet on red. “What was this about?” Carson asked no one.
Sedric sat very still. If Carson was aware of how he crouched like a rabbit hoping a hawk would not see him, he gave no sign of it. Sedric looked at the emptied bottles. He was the last one to know what they meant. If he never spoke, then Carson need never know what kind of man he had been and the sort of deceptions he’d practiced. No one need know the full account of how he had deceived those who had trusted him. Deceived those who loved him.
But if he never spoke, then he’d continue being that man. He’d continue deceiving those who trusted and loved him. Including Carson.
His voice sounded rusty when he spoke. “Those were mine, Carson. Greft took them from my room. ” He cleared his throat, tried to speak, couldn’t, and croaked the words out anyway. “They had dragon parts in them. Bits of flesh cut from a dirty wound that Thymara was bandaging. A few scales. And that one held blood. ” He was choking again, his throat closing with shame. He didn’t look at Carson’s face. “That was my plan when I came on this trip with Alise. I was going to stay just long enough to get dragon parts to sell, and then I was going back to Bingtown. I was going to sell it all to the Duke of Chalced. And then I was going to be rich and I was going to run off with Hest, so we could live as we pleased. ”
When the words were out, he sat still, staring at the little flasks. He felt as if he had vomited up something foul and it lay, stinking and steaming, between them. He saw Carson’s hand touch one of the glass containers and then draw back from it. His voice was always deep. Sometimes, when he was holding Sedric in his arms and he spoke to him, Sedric felt the words vibrate in him, chest to chest, as much as he heard them. But now his voice was the deepest Sedric had ever heard it, and confusion weighted it.
“I don’t understand…Isn’t that what you accused Leftrin of doing? Of using Alise so he could harvest dragon parts? And Jess…oh. ” For two quiet breaths, Carson thought it through. “I see, now. That’s why Jess assumed that you’d help him kill Relpda, isn’t it? He knew. He thought that you and he could collect parts from her, and then take the boat and head back to Trehaug. Or Chalced. Had you been working together then?”
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“Sweet Sa, no! Never!” He looked at Carson’s face now and what he saw there clove his heart in two. Carson’s face was closed, his eyes unreadable. Waiting. Waiting to hear how he’d been deceived, how he’d been played for a fool. Wondering if even now Sedric had a plan. Sedric had to look down. “Jess knew what I’d done. He saw me come back to the ship one night, saw me throw my bloody clothes away. But I’d…I don’t know why. I’ll never know why. I drank some of Relpda’s blood that same night. You thought I’d been poisoned. I hadn’t, but the way it affected me, I might as well have been. ”
He reached back to those days. They seemed distant now, unreal. “A couple of times, I woke up to find Jess in my room. I thought he’d come to check on me, the same way that you and Davvie did. But now I know that he was just there to search. He knew I had this stuff. That day, that day that I…I killed him, he’d shown me the red scale from Rapskal’s dragon. Alise had given it to me to draw for her journals. But afterward, she forgot about it, and I kept it. Jess knew about it and he found it. He said he hadn’t found the other stuff. But I think he’d talked to Greft, and Greft found what Jess couldn’t. I think that’s why Greft took the boat last night. Not to try to get back to Trehaug. Not even to try to take the stuff to Chalced and sell it. But to try to cure himself with it. To fix what was going wrong inside him. ”
A long silence followed. When Carson spoke, his voice was slow and careful, as if he were slowly building something, one word at a time. “But it didn’t work for him. He drank the blood and ate the scales, but it didn’t cure him. ”
“Maybe it only works when a dragon guides it,” Sedric suggested hesitantly. “Or maybe it would have cured him with time. Or maybe it did cure him, but the gallator venom killed him all the same. ”
“I guess it doesn’t matter now,” Carson said quietly.
“I’m sorry I didn’t trust you. Sorry I didn’t tell the whole truth to you from the beginning. ”
“You didn’t know me,” Carson conceded. The words were forgiving, but the wall in his voice was still there.
“It’s more than that,” Sedric said stubbornly. “I was treating Alise exactly as I was accusing Leftrin. I was using her to get close to the dragons, so I could harvest what I wanted, for my own ends. But somehow, when I thought about it, they seemed like two different things. I thought I could use her that way and keep it from her, so she’d never be hurt by it. And in my mind, I thought Leftrin would do that to her and just not care. ”
He glanced up at Carson. His face was still and closed. “I was stupid, Carson. You know that at first I couldn’t even hear the dragons. I thought they were like, well, like clever cows. Why shouldn’t I slaughter one and sell off the meat? We slaughter cows all the time. It was only after I had some of Relpda’s blood that I could begin to hear her. And to understand what she was, what they all were. If I’d known from the start, if I’d understood, I’d have abandoned the plan immediately. ”
“Alise. ”
“What about her?”
“Did you ever think what would become of her after you took Hest and ran away?” Carson spoke heavily. His hands, strong, calloused, competent, continued the work of tidying up the boat. He shipped the oars neatly, and restowed all of Greft’s gear. The little glass bottles remained in an accusing row
on the seat.
“A little bit,” Sedric conceded. “Not much. I thought that perhaps we could make it look like we were lost at sea. Then she’d be Hest’s widow. Part of his money and estate would stay with her, enough for her to live comfortably. ” He sighed and felt ashamed. “Once I even imagined that if she were pregnant when I left, it would be best of all for everyone. She’d have a child for company, to be an heir for the Finboks, and she’d control his inheritance for him until he came of age. ”
Carson had finished every conceivable task in the other boat. He remained crouched in it. His dark eyes under his heavy brow wandered over their surroundings. They were hunter’s eyes, always seeking, always wary. There were still several gallators watching them, but the creatures were keeping their keenest watch on Spit. He had finished eating and was splashily cleaning himself as he watched the other gallators. Evidently not even two gallators and a human had filled his belly. The noises of the silver’s ablutions were the only sounds for a time.
Sedric found himself meeting Carson’s dark stare. The hunter spoke carefully. “I know you finally told Alise about you and Hest. Did you ever tell her this part? About coming here to butcher dragons and sell the meat to Chalced?”
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“No. I didn’t. ” By an effort, he didn’t look away. “I didn’t have the courage. ”
Carson took in a deep breath through his nose and slowly let it out. He gathered the little bottles into his hands and held them out to Sedric. Sedric received them in his cupped hands. Carson settled himself on the rowing bench, untied the rope that had bound the two boats together, and then took up a paddle. “You can’t really begin something new until you’ve finished with the old, Sedric. ”
He dug the paddle into the water and moved his boat clear of Sedric’s. Spit, sensing they were returning to the barge, made a futile charge at the gallators. They retreated into the sunken roots of the brush where the dragon could not get at them. He gave a roar of frustration and then gave it up to follow Carson’s boat. Sedric watched them go. Neither one looked back at him.
Sedric dropped the little bottles into the bottom of the boat. They floated in the water that he had not bailed out. With his feet, he pushed them aside. Then he settled himself on the seat, took up a paddle, and followed Carson. Rain began to fall.
