Читать книгу The Rain Wild Chronicles: The Complete 4-Book Collection - Робин Хобб - Страница 20

Leftrin stood on the deck, watching the Chalcedean ship’s boat draw near. The skiff rode low in the water, burdened by the portly merchant, the rowing crew and a heap of grain sacks. The tall three-masted ship they were coming from dwarfed his barge. It was one reason that he declined to approach it. If the Chalcedeans wished to trade with him, let them come to him, where he could look down on them before they boarded. None of them appeared to be carrying weapons.

‘Aren’t you going to go look at their cargo before they start delivering to us?’ Swarge asked him. The well-muscled tillerman slowly pulled on the long handle of the sweep.

Leftrin, leaning on the railing, shook his head. ‘If they want my gold, let them do the work of delivering to me.’ Leftrin had no love for Chalcedeans, and no trust in them. He wouldn’t venture onto their deck where any sort of treachery might befall an honest man. Swarge made a slow sweep with the steering oar, effortlessly holding the barge in place against the river’s spreading current. All around them, the pale waters of the Rain Wild River were dispersing into the brack of the shallow bay. This was as far as Leftrin ever brought Tarman, and farther than he usually did. He made most of his living trading up and down the river among the Rain Wilder settlements, just as his father and grandfather had before him. Not for him the open seas and foreign shores. No. He made only a few yearly forays to the river’s mouth, usually when a reliable go-between contacted him. Then he went only to trade for the foodstuffs that the Rain Wilds residents needed to survive. He couldn’t be as fussy about whom he dealt with at the river mouth, but Leftrin kept his guard up. A wise trader knew the difference between making a deal and making a friend. When dealing with a Chalcedean, there was only business, never friendship, and the trader who bartered with them had best have eyes in the back of his head. Technically, the two countries were at peace now, but peace with Chalced never lasted.

So Leftrin watched them come with narrowed eyes and a suspicious set to his mouth. The fellows on the oars looked to be ordinary sailors, and the sacks of grain no more than sacks of grain. Nonetheless, as the small boat pulled alongside his barge and tossed a line, he let Skelly, their youngest crew member, catch it and make it fast. He kept his place by the railing and watched the men in the boat. Big Eider ghosted up alongside him and stood, quietly scratching his black beard and watching the boat come. ‘Watch the sailors,’ Leftrin told him softly. ‘I’ll keep an eye on the merchant.’

Eider nodded.

Ladder cleats were built right onto Tarman’s sides. The Chalcedean merchant climbed them easily and Leftrin revised his estimate of the man; he might be on the heavy side but he looked physically able enough. He wore a heavy sealskin cloak, trimmed and lined with scarlet. A wide leather belt decorated with silver secured his woollen tunic. The sea wind caught at the man’s cloak and sent it billowing, but the merchant appeared unfazed by it. As much sailor as merchant, Leftrin thought to himself. Once aboard, the merchant nodded gravely to Leftrin and received a curt bow in return. The merchant leaned over the side and barked several commands in Chalcedean to his oarsmen before turning back to Leftrin.

‘Greetings, Captain. I will have my crewmen bring aboard samples of both my wheat and my barley. I trust the quality of my goods will meet with your approval.’

‘That is yet to be seen, Merchant.’ Leftrin spoke affably but firmly, smiling all the while.

The man glanced around at his bare deck. ‘And your trade goods? I expected to find them set out for my inspection.’

‘Coin needs little inspection. When the time comes, you’ll find the scale set up in my stateroom. I go by weight rather than coinage.’

‘And to that, I have no objection. Kings and their mints may rise and fall, but gold is gold and silver is silver. Still,’ and here the man dropped his voice, ‘when one comes to the mouth of the Rain Wild River, one does not expect gold and silver. I had hoped for a chance to purchase Rain Wild goods from you.’

‘If you’re after Rain Wilds goods, then you’ll have to take yourself to Bingtown. Everyone knows that is the only place to obtain them.’ Leftrin watched past the Chalcedean’s shoulder as one of his men gained the deck. Eider was ready to meet the man, but he didn’t offer to take his sack from him. Bellin stood nearby, her heavy pole ready to hand. Without even intending to, she looked more formidable than Eider.

The foreign oarsman lugged a heavy sack of grain slung across his shoulder. He took two steps from the rail, let his sack thud to Leftrin’s deck, and then turned back to fetch another one. The sack looked good, tightly woven hemp, unmarked by salt or damp. But that didn’t mean the grain inside was good, or that all the bags would be of like quality. Leftrin kept his face neutral.

The Chalcedean trader came a half-step closer. ‘That is, indeed, what men say and what many men hear. But a few men hear of other goods, and other bargains, quietly struck and to the great benefit of both parties. Our go-between mentioned that you were a man well known as both a shrewd captain and a savvy trader, owner of the most efficient barge ever seen. He said that if there was anyone who might have the sort of special goods I seek, it would be you. Or that you would know to whom I should speak.’

‘Did he?’ Leftrin asked affably as the oarsman deposited another bag on his deck. It looked as tightly woven and well kept as the first one. He nodded to Hennesey, and the mate opened the deckhouse door. Grigsby, the ship’s yellow cat, sauntered out onto the deck.

‘He did,’ the merchant asserted in a bold yet quiet voice.

Past the merchant’s shoulder, Leftrin watched the cat. The sassy little bastard stuck his claws in the Tarman’s deck, stretched, and then pulled his claws in toward himself, leaving tiny scratches on the wood. He strolled toward the captain, making a leisurely tour of the deck before settling to his task. He went to the unfamiliar sacks, sniffed them casually, and then butted his head against one, marking it as worthy of being his possession. Then he moved on toward the galley door. Leftrin pursed his mouth and gave a small nod of approval. If there’d been any scent of rodent on the sacks at all, the cat would have shown more interest. So this grain merchant came from a clean ship. Remarkable.

‘Special goods,’ the man repeated quietly. ‘He said it was known to him that you had access.’

Leftrin turned his head sharply to meet the merchant’s intense grey gaze. His brow furrowed. The man misinterpreted his look.

‘Of all kinds. Even the smallest scale. A piece of skin.’ He lowered his voice more. ‘A piece of cocoon-wood.’

‘If that’s what you want to trade for, you’ve come to the wrong man,’ Leftrin said bluntly. He turned away from the merchant and crossed the deck to the sacks of grain. He went down on one knee, drawing his belt knife as he did so. He cut the twine that stitched the sack’s mouth and pulled it free then plunged his hand into the grain and rolled the kernels in the palm of his hand. It was good grain, clean and free of chaff and straw. He spilled it back into the sack and pulled a handful from the depths of the bag. When he brought it out into the light, it was just as pleasing as the first handful. With his free hand, he picked up some of the wheat and put it into his mouth. He chewed it.

‘Dried in sunlight, to keep well, but not dried so much that it has no flavour or virtue,’ the merchant informed him.

Leftrin nodded abruptly. He poured what he held back into the bag, dusted his hands, and turned his attention to the next bag. He cut the knot, unlaced the sack and continued his sampling process. When he was finished, he sat back on his heels, swallowed the mouthful of barley and conceded, ‘The quality is good. If the rest of the shipment matches the samples in these bags, I’ll be a happy buyer. Once we’ve set the price per bag, you can start transferring the cargo. I’ll reserve the right to refuse any bag and I’ll inspect each one as it comes onto my deck.’

The merchant favoured him with a slow nod that made his agreement formal. ‘Your terms are easy to accept. Now. Shall we retire to your quarters to set the price per bag and perhaps discuss other transactions?’

‘Or we could negotiate here,’ Leftrin observed evenly.

‘If you please, your quarters would be more private,’ the merchant replied.

‘As you will.’ Once or twice, Leftrin had trafficked in forbidden goods. He had no such goods that he wished to trade now, but he’d let the man make an incriminating offer. Possibly an offended reaction and a suggestion that the merchant’s offer might be reported to the Rain Wild authorities, thus curtailing his trading permit would bring the price of his grain down. Leftrin was not above such tactics. The man was, after all, a Chalcedean. No fairness was owed to any of them. He gestured toward the door of his small stateroom, certain that this well-garbed merchant would be appalled at his tiny quarters.

‘And while we talk, I will have my workers ferry the grain to your barge.’

‘Before we have set a price?’ Leftrin was surprised. It gave him too much of an advantage. If he delayed the bargaining until most of the cargo was on board his vessel, and then refused to meet the merchant’s demands, the Chalcedean would have to have his crew unload the entire barge again.

‘I am very certain that we shall agree upon a price we both find fair,’ the man said quietly.

So be it, Leftrin thought to himself. Never turn down an advantage in bargaining. Over his shoulder, he called to the mate, ‘Hennesey! You and Grigsby watch the grain sacks as they bring them. Keep a count of each. Don’t be shy about checking any that look light or water-stained or rat-gnawed. Tap on my door when we’ve got a load.’

When they had entered and seated themselves, Leftrin on his bunk and the merchant on the room’s sole chair at the small table, the man lost none of his aplomb. He looked about the humble room and then again made his formal nod and said, ‘I wish you to know my name. I am Sinad of the Arich heritage. The sons of my family have been traders for longer than Bingtown has existed. We have not favoured the wars that have put our countries at odds with one another and restricted our traffic and our profits. So, now that the hostilities have subsided, we hasten to make contact directly with the traders of the Rain Wild River. We wish to establish custom that will eventually, we hope, be very profitable to both of us. In fact, exclusive custom with a small circle of reputable traders would make us rejoice.’

Despite his reservations about all Chalcedeans, the man’s directness impressed Leftrin favourably. He brought out the bottle of rum and the two small glasses he kept in his room for trading negotiations. The glasses were ancient, heavy and a very dark blue. As he poured the rum, silver stars suddenly sparkled in a band around the rim of each glass. The display had the desired effect on the merchant. He gave a small gasp of amazement and then leaned forward avariciously. He took up his glass without being invited to do so, and held it up to the cabin’s small window. Leftrin spoke while he was still admiring the priceless article.

‘I’m Leftrin, captain and owner of the river barge Tarman. And I don’t know what my family did for a living before we left Jamaillia, and I expect it doesn’t much matter. What I do now is run this barge. I trade. If you’re an honest man with clean goods, we’ll strike a bargain, and the next time I see you, I’ll be even more prone to bargain. But I don’t trade exclusively with anyone. The man who gets my coins is the man with the best bargain. So. Let’s settle to our task. How much per sack for the wheat, and how much for the barley?’

The Chalcedean lowered his glass back to the table. He had not tasted it. ‘What are you offering? For goods such as these,’ and he tapped the glass before him with the back of his forefinger’s nail, ‘I’d be willing to give you an excellent exchange.’

‘I’m offering only coin, this trip. Coins of silver and gold, by weight value rather than minting. Nothing else.’ The glasses were of Elderling make. He had a few treasures of that nature. A woman’s shawl that seemed to generate warmth. A strong box that emitted chimes and a bright light whenever the lid was opened. There were other items as well, mostly things his grandfather had bought for his grandmother many years ago. He kept them all beneath a secret hatch under his bunk. It pleased him to use glasses worth a fortune to serve a Chalcedean merchant rum in the confines of his seemingly humble stateroom.

Sinad Arich leaned back on the small chair. It creaked as it took his weight. He lifted his wide shoulders and then let them fall. ‘Coin is good, for grain. I can use coin, of any minting. With coin, a man can traffic in any goods he chooses. Grain on this trip, for example. But on my last journey I visited Bingtown, with coin of my own. And there what I bought for my coin was information.’

Chill uncertainty rose in Leftrin. The man had not made a threatening move but his earlier comment about his ‘efficient barge’ now took on an ominous meaning. Leftrin continued to lean back in his chair and to smile. But the smile didn’t reach his pale eyes. ‘Let’s set a price for the grain and be done. I’d like to be heading back up the river by the turn of the tide.’

‘As would I,’ Sinad concurred.

Leftrin took a swig from his glass. The rum went down warm but the glass seemed unusually cold against his fingers. ‘Surely you mean that by the turn of the tide, you hope to be back to sea.’

Sinad took a gentlemanly sip from his own glass. ‘Oh, no. I am most careful to say exactly what I mean, especially when I am speaking in a tongue once foreign to me. I am hoping that by the time the tide turns, my grain and my personal effects will be loaded on your barge. I expect that we will have settled a price for my grain and for your services, and that you will then take me up your river.’

‘I can’t. You must know our rules and laws in this matter. You are not only a foreigner, you are a Chalcedean. To visit the Rain Wilds, you must have a permit from the Bingtown Traders’ Council. To trade with us, you must have the proper licences from the Rain Wild Council. You cannot even travel up the river without the proper travel papers.’

‘Which, as I am not a fool, I have. Stamped, sealed, and signed in purple ink. I also carry letters of recommendation from several Bingtown Traders, attesting that I am a most honest and honourable trader. Even if I am a Chalcedean.’

A drop of sweat had begun to trickle down Leftrin’s spine. If the man actually possessed the paperwork he claimed to have, then he was either a miracle worker or a most adept blackmailer. Leftrin could not recall a time in his life when he had seen a Chalcedean visiting the Rain Wilds legally. They had come as raiders, as warriors and occasionally as spies, but not as legitimate traders. He doubted that a Chalcedean would know how to be a legitimate trader. No. This man was trouble and danger. And he had deliberately chosen to approach Leftrin and the Tarman. Not good.

Sinad set his glass carefully back on the small table. It remained half full. He smiled at it and then observed blandly, ‘This vessel of yours fascinates me. For instance, it interests me that propelling it once demanded a dozen oarsmen. Now, it is said, you crew it with only six men, counting yourself. For a barge of this size, I find that startling. Almost as surprising that your tillerman can hold his place here at the river’s mouth with apparent ease.’ He lifted the glass again and held it to the light as if admiring the small stars.

‘I redesigned the hull to make the barge more efficient.’ A second drop of sweat joined the first in its journey down his back. Who had talked? Genrod, of course. He’d heard, a few years ago, that the man had moved from Trehaug to Bingtown. At the time Leftrin had suspected that the money he had paid him for his work on Tarman had financed the man’s move. Genrod was an amazing artisan, a master in the working of wood, even wizardwood, and four years ago Leftrin had paid him well, very well indeed, for both his skill and his silence. The results of his efforts had far surpassed Leftrin’s wildest hopes, and he recalled now, with a sinking heart, that more than once Genrod had mourned that his ‘greatest work must remain secret and submerged forever’. Not money, but Genrod’s egotistical need to brag was what had betrayed Leftrin’s trust. If he ever saw the skinny little wretch again, he’d tie a knot in him.

The Chalcedean was regarding him closely. ‘Surely I am not the only one who has noticed this? I imagine that many of your fellow Traders envy your new-found efficiency, and doubtless they have importuned you to know the secret of your new hull design. For if you have modified a ship as old as yours, one that, I am told, is among the oldest of the Trading vessels built from the marvellous dragon wood, then surely they will wish to do the same with theirs.’

Leftrin hoped he had not gone pale. He abruptly doubted that Genrod was the source of all this information. The carver might have bragged of working on Tarman, but Genrod was Trader through and through. He would not have spoken openly of Tarman’s pedigree as the eldest liveship. This trader had more than one source of gossip. He tried to bait a name out of him. ‘Traders respect one another’s secrets,’ was all he said.

‘Do they? Then they are like no other traders I have ever known. Every trader I know is always eager to discover whatever advantage his fellow has. Gold is sometimes offered for such secrets. And when gold does not buy the desired item, well, I have heard tales of violence done.’

‘Neither gold nor violence will buy what you seek from me.’

Sinad shook his head. ‘You mistake me. I will not go into whether it was gold or violence, but I will tell you that the exchange has already been made, and all that I need to know about you and your ship, I know. Let us speak plainly. The High Duke of Chalced is not a young man. With every year, nay, with almost every week, that passes some new ailment frets him. Some of the most experienced and respected healers in all of Chalced have attempted to treat him. Many have died for their failures. So, perhaps, it is expediency that now makes so many of them say that his only hope for improved health and long life will come from medicines made from dragon parts. They are so apologetic to him that they do not have the required ingredients. They promise him that as soon as the required ingredients are procured, they will concoct the elixirs that will restore his youth, beauty and vigour.’ The merchant sighed. He turned his gaze to the cabin’s small window and stared off into the distance. ‘And thus, his anger and frustration passes over his healers and settles instead on the trading families of Chalced. Why, he demands, can they not procure what he needs? Are they traitors? Do they desire his death? At first, he offered us gold for our efforts. And when gold did not suffice, he turned to that always effective coin: blood.’ His gaze came back to Leftrin. ‘Do you understand what I am telling you? Do you understand that, no matter how much you may despise Chalcedeans, they, too, love their families? Cherish their elderly parents and tender young sons? Understand, my friend, that I will do whatever I must to protect my family.’

Desperation vied with cold ruthlessness in the Chalcedean’s eyes. This was a dangerous man. He had come, empty-handed, to Leftrin’s vessel, but the Rain Wilds Trader now perceived he had not come without weapons. Leftrin cleared his throat and said, ‘We will now set a reasonable price for the grain, and then I think our trading will be done.’

Sinad smiled at him. ‘The price of my grain, trading partner, is my passage up the river and that you speak well of me to your fellows. If you cannot procure what I need, then you will see that I am introduced to those who can.

‘And in return, I will give you my grain and my silence about your secrets. Now what could be a better trade than that?’

Breakfast had been delicious and perfectly prepared. The generous remains of a meal intended for three still graced the white-clothed table. The serving dishes were covered now in what would be a vain attempt to keep the food at serving temperature. Alise sat alone at the table. Her dishes had already been efficiently and swiftly cleared away. She lifted the teapot and poured herself another cup of tea and waited.

She felt like a spider crouched at the edge of her web, waiting for the fly to blunder into her trap. She never lingered over meals. Hest knew that. She suspected it was why he was so frequently late to the table when he was home. She hoped that if she sat here long enough, he’d come in to eat and she’d finally have the chance to confront him.

He deliberately avoided her these days, not just at table but anywhere that they might be alone. She did not agonize about it. She was glad enough to be left to eat in peace, and even gladder when he did not disturb her in her bed at night. Unfortunately, that had not been the case last night. Hest had stridden into her room in the small hours of the morning, shutting the door with a firm thump that had wakened her from a sound sleep. He’d smelled of strong tobacco and expensive wine. He’d taken off his robe, tossed it across the foot of the bed, and then clambered in beside her. In the dark room, she saw him only as a deeper shadow.

‘Come here,’ he’d said, as if commanding a dog. She’d stayed where she was, on the edge of the bed.

‘I was sound asleep,’ she’d protested.

‘And now you’re not, and we’re both here, so let’s make a fine fat baby to make my father’s heart rejoice, shall we?’ His tone was bitter. ‘One is all we need, darling Alise. So cooperate with me. This won’t take long, and then you can go back to sleep. And wake up in the morning and spend the day giving my money to scroll-dealers.’

It had all fallen into place. He’d been to see his father, and been chided yet again for his lack of an heir. And yesterday Alise had bought not one but two rather expensive old scrolls. Both were from the Spice Islands. She couldn’t read a word of either of them, but the illustrations looked as if they were intended to depict Elderlings. It made sense to her; if the Elderlings had occupied the Cursed Shores in ancient days, they would have had trading partners and those trading partners might have made some written record of their dealings. Lately she had turned her efforts to seeking out such old records. The Spice Island scrolls had been her first real find. Even she had blanched at the cost of them. But she’d had to have them, and so she had paid.

And tonight she would pay again, both for their childless state and for daring to expand her research library. If she had not stayed up so late poring over her latest acquisitions, she might have simply accommodated him. But she was tired and suddenly very weary of how he treated this portion of their married life.

She said something she’d never said before. ‘No. Perhaps tomorrow night.’

He’d stared at her. In the darkness she’d felt the anger of his gaze. ‘That’s not your decision,’ he said bluntly.

‘It’s not your sole decision either,’ she’d retorted and started to leave the bed.

‘Tonight, it is,’ he said. With no warning, he lunged across the bed, seized her by the arm and dragged her back. With the length of his body, he pinned her down.

She struggled briefly but as he dug his fingers into her upper arms and held her down, it was quickly apparent that she could not escape him. ‘Let me go!’ she whisper-shrieked at him.

‘In a moment,’ he replied tightly. And a moment later, ‘If you don’t struggle, I won’t hurt you.’

He lied. Even after she had acquiesced, her head turned to one side, her eyes fixed on the wall, he’d held her arms tightly and thrust hard against her. It hurt. The pain and the humiliation made it seem as if it took him forever to accomplish his task. She didn’t weep. When he rolled away from her and then sat up on the edge of her bed, she was dry-eyed and silent.

He sat in the quiet dark for a time, and then she felt him stand and heard the whisper of fabric as he donned his robe again. ‘If we are fortunate, neither of us will have to go through that again,’ he said dryly. What had stayed with her the rest of the night was that she had never heard him sound more sincere. He’d left her bed and her room.

Unable to sleep, she’d spent the rest of the night thinking about him and their sham of a marriage. He’d seldom been so rough with her. Sex with Hest was usually perfunctory and efficient. He entered her room, announced his intention, mated with her and left. In the four years they’d been together, he’d never slept in her bed. He had never kissed her with passion, never touched any part of her body with interest.

She’d made humiliating efforts to please him. She’d anointed herself with perfumes and acquired and discarded various forms of nightdress. She had even tried to instigate romance with him, coming to his study late one evening and attempting to embrace him. He had not thrust her aside. He’d risen from his chair, told her that he was quite busy just now, and walked her to the door of the room, and shut her out of it. She’d fled, weeping, to her room.

Later that month, when he’d come to her bed, she had shamed herself again. She’d embraced him when he mounted her, and strained to kiss him. He’d held his face away from her. Nonetheless, her hungry body had tried to take whatever pleasure it could from his touch. He hadn’t responded to her willingness. When he had finished, he had rolled away from her, ignoring her attempt to hold him. ‘Alise. Please. In the future, don’t embarrass us both,’ he’d said quietly before he shut the door behind him.

Even now, her face reddened as she recalled her failed attempts to seduce him. Indifference was bad enough; but last night, when he had proven that he not only could but would force her if he wished to, she’d had to recognize the ugly truth. Hest was changing. Over the last year, he’d become ever more abrupt with her. He had begun to deploy his little barbed comments against her in public as well as in private. The small courtesies that any woman could expect from her husband were vanishing from her life. In the beginning, he had taken pains to be attentive to her in public, to offer his arm when they walked together, to hand her up into her carriage. Those small graces had vanished now. But last night was the first time that cruelty had replaced them.

Not even the precious Spice Island scrolls were worth what he had done to her. It was time to end this charade. She had the evidence of his infidelity. It was time to use it to render her marriage contract void.

The clues were small but plain. The first had come as an invoice mistakenly placed on her desk instead of his. It was for a very expensive lotion, one she knew she had never bought. When she had queried the merchant about it, he had produced a receipt for its delivery, signed in Hest’s hand. She had paid the bill, but kept the papers. In a similar fashion, she had come to discover that Hest was paying the rent on a cottage half a day’s ride from their home in an area of small farms, mostly settled by Three Ships immigrants. And the last was the item she had noticed last night; he wore a ring she had never seen before; she had felt the bite of it as he had gripped her arms so cruelly tight last night. Hest enjoyed jewellery, and often wore rings. But his taste ran to massive worked silver; this ring had been gold, with a tiny stone set in it. She knew with certainty that it was nothing Hest would ever have bought for himself.

So now she understood. He’d married her only to keep his family content, so that they might show to the world their son’s proper Trader wife. The Finboks would never accept a Three Ships girl into their family, let alone recognize her child as their heir. The lotion, she was sure, had been a gift for his mistress. The ring he now wore was her pledge to him. He was unfaithful. He had broken their contract, and she would use his broken vow as a way to free herself from him.

She would be poor. There would be a settlement from his family, of course, but she didn’t deceive herself that she could live on it as she did under his roof. She would have to retreat to the little piece of land that had been her dowry. She’d have to live simply. She’d have her work, of course, and—

The door opened. Sedric entered, laughing about something and speaking over his shoulder to Hest. He turned and saw her and smiled. ‘Alise, good morning!’

‘Good morning, Sedric.’ The words came out of her mouth, a reflexive pleasantry.

Then, as Hest glared at her, annoyed at still finding her at the breakfast table, she heard herself blurt out, ‘You’ve been unfaithful to me. That voids our marriage contract. You can let me go quietly, or I can take this to the Traders’ Council and present my evidence.’

Sedric had been in the act of seating himself. He dropped abruptly into his chair and stared at her in white-faced horror. She was suddenly ashamed that he had to witness this. ‘You don’t have to stay, Sedric. I’m sorry to make you a party to this.’ She chose formal words but her shaking voice ruined them.

‘A party to what?’ Hest demanded. He raised one eyebrow at her. ‘Alise, this is the first I’ve heard of this nonsense, and if you are wise, it will be the last! I see you’ve finished eating. Why don’t you go and leave me in peace!’

‘As you left me in peace last night?’ she asked bitterly, pushing the hard words out. ‘I know everything, Hest. I’ve put it all together. Expensive palat lotion. A little cottage in the Three Ships district. That ring you’re wearing. It all fits together.’ She took a breath. ‘You have a Three Ships mistress, don’t you?’

Sedric made a small scandalized sound as if he gasped for air. But Hest was unfazed. ‘What ring?’ he demanded. ‘Alise, this is all nonsense! You insult us both with these wild accusations.’

His hands were bare. No matter. ‘The one you wore last night. The little stone on it scratched me. I can show you the mark, if you’d like.’

‘I can’t think of anything I’d like less!’ he retorted. He flung himself into a chair at the table and began lifting the covers on the dishes. He scooped up a spoonful of eggs, glared at them, and then splatted them back into the dish. He leaned back in the chair and regarded her. ‘Are you sure you are well?’ He almost sounded concerned for her. ‘You’ve taken an odd collection of small facts and made them lead in a very insulting direction. The ring you saw last night belongs to Sedric. How could you imagine it was mine? He’d left it on the table at the inn. I put it on my hand so it wouldn’t be lost. And I gave it back to him this morning. Are you satisfied? Ask him if you wish.’ He lifted the cover on another dish, muttering, ‘Of all the idiocy. Before breakfast, too.’ He speared several small sausages and shook them off on his plate. Sedric hadn’t moved or spoken. ‘Sedric!’ Hest snapped at him abruptly.

He startled, gaped at Hest and then turned hastily to Alise. ‘Yes. I bought the ring. And Hest gave it back to me. Yes.’ He looked acutely miserable.

Hest suddenly relaxed. Nonchalantly, he rang the bell for a servant. When a maid came to the door, he gestured at the table. ‘Bring some hot food. This is disgusting. And make a fresh pot of tea. Sedric, will you have tea?’

When Sedric just stared at him, Hest snorted in exasperation. ‘Sedric will have tea, also.’ As soon as the door closed behind the maid, Hest spoke to his secretary. ‘Explain the lotion, if you would, Sedric. And my supposed “love cottage”.’

Sedric looked ill. ‘The palat lotion was a gift.’

‘For my mother,’ Hest cut in. ‘And the cottage is a place that Sedric uses, not I. He said he needed some privacy, and I agreed. It seemed a small accommodation to make for him, as well as he has served me. And if he chooses to entertain there, and who he has in to visit him, I consider none of my business. Nor yours, Alise. He’s a man, and a man has needs.’ He bit off a piece of a sausage, chewed and swallowed it. ‘Frankly, I’m shocked at all this. You are my wife. To imagine you shuffling through my papers, digging in the hope of discovering some nasty secret; well, it’s dismaying. What ails you, woman, to even think of such a thing?’

She found she was trembling. Was it all so easily explained away? Could she be that wrong? ‘You’re a man, too.’ She pointed out in a shaking voice. ‘With needs. Yet you seldom visit me. You ignore me.’

‘I’m a busy man, Alise. With concerns much more profound than, well, your carnal desires. Must we speak of this in front of Sedric? If you cannot spare my feelings, can you at least consider his?’

‘You have to have someone else. I know you do!’ The words came out of her as a quavering cry.

‘You know nothing,’ Hest retorted in sudden disgust. ‘But you shall. Sedric. As Alise has made you a party to our nasty little squabble, I shall avail myself of you. Sit up and tell the truth.’ Hest turned suddenly back to her. ‘You will believe Sedric, won’t you? Even if you consider your wedded husband a lying adulterer.’

She locked eyes with Sedric. The man was pale. He was breathing audibly, his mouth half ajar. What had ever possessed her, to speak out in front of him that way? What would he think of her now? He had ever been her friend. Could she salvage at least that? ‘He has never lied to me,’ she said. ‘I’ll believe him.’

‘Alise, I …’

‘Now, quiet, Sedric, until you hear the question.’ Hest put his forearms on the table and leaned on them thoughtfully. His voice was as measured as if he were stating the terms of a contract. ‘Answer my wife truthfully and fully. You are with me almost every hour of my working day and sometimes far into the night. If anyone knows my habits, it’s you. Look at Alise and tell her true: Do I have another woman in my life?’

‘I … that is, no. No.’

‘Have I ever shown any interest, here in Bingtown or on our trading journeys, in any woman?’

Sedric’s voice had grown a little stronger. ‘No. Never.’

‘There. You see.’ Hest leaned forward to help himself to a slice of fruit-bread. ‘Your foul accusations had no foundation at all.’

‘Sedric?’ She was almost pleading with him. She had been so sure. ‘You are telling me the truth?’

Sedric took a ragged breath. ‘There are no other women in Hest’s life, Alise. None at all.’

He looked down at his hands, embarrassed, and she saw that the ring she had seen on Hest’s hand last night was now on Sedric’s. Shame scalded her. ‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered.

Hest thought she spoke to him. ‘Sorry? You insult me and humiliate me in front of Sedric, and “sorry” is the best you can manage? I think I’m owed substantially more than that, Alise.’

She had come to her feet, but she felt unstable. Suddenly she just wished to be out of the room and away from this horrible man who had somehow come to dominate her life. All she wanted now was the quiet of her room, and to lose herself in ancient scrolls from another world and time. ‘I don’t know what else I can say.’

‘Well. There’s isn’t much you can say, after such a grave insult. You’ve apologized, but it scarcely mends the matter.’

‘I’m sorry,’ she said again, surrendering to him. ‘I’m sorry I ever brought it up.’

‘That makes two of us. Now let this be an end of this. Don’t ever accuse me of something like that again. It’s beneath you. It’s beneath both of us to have conversations like this.’

‘I won’t. I promise.’ She nearly knocked her chair over as she left the table and hurried toward the door.

‘I will hold you to that promise!’ Hest called after her.

‘I promise,’ she repeated dully, and fled from the room.

Night was closing in. Even in summer, the days seemed short. The towering trees of the rain forest carpeted the wide flat valley and gave way only to the river’s grey swathe. Daylight trickled down only when the sun was high enough for its light to strike the narrow alley of water and land between the brooding walls of trees that hemmed the river. Evening began its slow creep when the sun moved past it. Bright daylight was short and twilight dominated their lives. Four years had passed since the summer she had emerged from her case. Four years of thwarted hopes, poor food and neglect. Four summers of too much shade, four winters of rainy, grey days. Four years of no life save eating and then sleeping, sleeping far too many hours of every day. Instead of feeling as if she slept too much, Sintara always felt vaguely weary. Swampy land and dimness were the province of newts, not dragons. Dragons, she thought to herself, were creatures of strong sunlight, dry sand and long hot days. And flight. How she longed to fly. Fly away from the mud and the crowded conditions and the gloomy riverbank.

She craned her neck to nuzzle at a patch of gritty mud that had dried behind her wing. She rubbed at it, then stretched her stunted wing and slapped it several times against her body in an attempt to dislodge the irritation. Most of it went trickling down her side in a cascade of dust. It was a minor relief. She longed to bathe herself in a pool of hot, still water, to emerge into strong sunlight to dry, and then to roll and scratch in abrasive sand until her scales gleamed. None of those things existed in her current life. Only her ancestral dreams informed her of them.

It was not the only dragon memory that taunted her. She had many dreams. Dreams of flight, of hunting, of mating. Memories of a city with a well of liquid silver where a dragon could slake that thirst no water could quench. Many memories of gorging on hot, freshly-killed meat. Memories of mating in flight, of hollowing out a sandy beach nest for her eggs. Many, many frustrating memories. Yet for all that, she knew she did not have a full complement of memories. It was maddening that she knew enough to know she was missing whole areas of knowledge, but could not reconstruct for herself exactly what that missing knowledge was. It was an additional cruelty that the dragon memories she did have showed her so clearly all her physical body lacked.

The memories were a heritage denied her. It was the way of her kind. In the serpent stage of their lives, they retained access to an ancestral hoard of serpent memories. Migration routes, warm currents and fish runs were not the only information; there was also the knowledge of the gathering places and the songs and the structure of their society as serpents. When a serpent entered the cocoon, such memories faded until by the time the dragon emerged from its case, its life as a serpent was only a hazy recollection. Replacing those memories were the hereditary wealth of a dragon’s proper knowledge. How to fly by the stars, and where the best hunting was to be found in each season, the traditional challenges for a mating duel, and what beach was best for the laying of eggs were some of those memories. But each dragon also could claim the more distant but personal memories of a dragon’s particular ancestry. The memories came, not just from the serpent’s changing body, but from the saliva of the dragons that helped the serpents shape their cocoons. There had been precious little of that when this generation of serpents cocooned. Perhaps that was what they were all lacking now. Perhaps that was why some of their number were as dull-witted as cattle.

The sun must have reached the unseen horizon. The stars were beginning to show in the narrow stripe of sky over the river. She looked up at the band of night and thought it a good metaphor for her truncated and restricted existence. This muddy beach by the river bounded by the immense forest behind her was the only existence she had known since she hatched into this life. The dragons could not retreat into the forest. The picket trees fenced them onto the shore as effectively as their namesake. Although the immense trees had been well spaced out by nature, their supplementary roots and all manner of underbrush, vines and plants grew in the swampy spaces between them. Not even the much smaller humans could travel easily on the rain forest floor. Paths pushed through the brush soon became sodden trails and eventually swampy fingers of mud. No. The only way out of this forest for a dragon was up. She flapped her useless wings again and then folded them onto her back. Then she lowered her head from her stargazing and looked around her. The others were huddled together beneath the trees. She despised them. They were stunted and misshapen things, sickly, quarrelsome, weak and unworthy.

Just as she was.

She plodded through the mud to join them. She was hungry but she scarcely noticed that any more. She had been constantly hungry since the day she hatched from her case. Today she’d been fed seven fish, large if not fresh, and one bird. The bird had been stiff. Sometimes she dreamed of meat that was warm and limp with the blood still running. It was only a dream now. The hunters were seldom able to find large game close by; when they did get a marsh elk or a riverpig, the creatures had to be chopped into pieces before they could be transported back to the dragons. And the dragons seldom got the best parts of the beasts. Bones and guts and hide, tough shanks and horned heads, but seldom the hump from a riverpig’s back or the meat-rich hind haunch of a marsh elk. Those parts went to the humans’ tables. The dragons were left with the scraps and offal like stray dogs begging outside a city’s gate.

The boggy ground sucked at her feet each time she lifted them and her tail seemed permanently caked with mud. The land here suffered as much as the dragons did; it never had a chance to harden and heal. All the trees that bordered the clearing were showing the effects of the dragons’ residence. The lower trunks were scarred and scraped. Dragons scratching vermin from their skin had eroded bark from some of the trees, and the roots of others had been exposed by the traffic of clawed feet. She had overheard the humans worrying that even trees with trunks the size of towers would eventually die from such treatment. And what would happen when such a tree fell? The humans had somewhat wisely moved their homes out of the treetops of the affected trees. But didn’t they realize that if one of the trees fell, it would doubtless crash through the branches of neighbouring trees? Humans were stupider than squirrels in that regard.

Only in the summer months did the muddy beach approach a level of firmness that made walking less strenuous. In winter, the smaller dragons struggled to lift their feet high enough to walk. At least, they had struggled. Most of them had died off last winter. She thought of that with regret. She had anticipated each of the weaklings dying, and had been swift enough, twice, to fill her belly with their meat and her mind with their memories. But they were all gone now, and barring accidents or disease, her mates looked as if they would survive the summer.

She approached the huddled mass of dragons. That was not right. Serpents slept so, tangled and knotted together beneath the waves lest the currents of the ocean sweep them apart and scatter them. Most of her serpent memories now were dimmed, as was appropriate. She had no need of them in this incarnation. She had been Sisarqua in that life. But that was not who she was now. Now she was Sintara, a dragon, and dragons did not sleep huddled together like prey.

Not unless they were crippled, useless, weakling things, little better than moving meat. She approached the sleeping creatures and shouldered her way into them. She stepped on Fente’s tail, and the little green wretch snapped at her. At her, but not scoring her skin. Fente was vicious, but not stupidly so. She knew that the first time she actually bit Sintara was the last time she’d bite anything. ‘You’re in my spot,’ Sintara warned her, and Fente clapped her tail close to her side.

‘You’re clumsy. Or blind,’ Fente retorted, but quietly, as if she hadn’t meant Sintara to hear her. In casual vengeance, Sintara shouldered Fente into Ranculos. The red had already been asleep. Without so much as opening his silver eyes, he kicked Fente in rebuke and resettled his bulk.

‘What were you doing?’ Sestican, the second largest blue male asked her as she settled against him. It was her place. She always slept between him and the dour Mercor. It did not indicate friendliness or any sort of alliance. She had chosen the place because they were two of the largest males, and sheltering between them was the wisest place to sleep.

She didn’t mind his question. He was one of the few she considered capable of intelligent conversation. ‘Looking at the sky.’

‘Dreaming,’ he surmised.

‘Hating,’ she corrected him.

‘Dreaming and hating are the same for us, in this life.’

‘If this is to be the last life, if all my memories must die with me, why must it be so dreary?’

‘If you keep up your useless talk and disturb my sleep, I might make your last life end much faster than you expected.’ This from Kalo. His blue-black scaling made him nearly invisible in the dark. Sintara felt the small venom sacs in her throat swell with her hatred of him, but she kept her silence. He was the largest of them all. And the meanest. If she had been capable of producing enough venom to damage him, she would probably have spit it at him, regardless of the consequences. But even on days when she had fed well, her sacs produced barely enough venom to stun a large fish. If she spat at Kalo, he would kill her with his teeth and eat her. Useless. Useless anger from an impotent dragon. She wrapped her tail around herself and folded her stumpy wings on her back. She closed her eyes.

There were only fifteen of them left now. She cast her mind back. More than one hundred serpents had massed at the mouth of the river and migrated up it. How many had actually cocooned? Fewer than eighty. She didn’t know how many had initially emerged, nor how many had survived the first day. It scarcely mattered now. Disease had taken some, and a few had fallen prey to a flash flood. The disease had been the most terrifying to her. She could not recall anything similar and those others who were capable of intelligent speech had likewise been baffled by it. It had begun with a dry barking cough at night, one that disturbed the whole gathering of dragons. It had continued and spread until almost all of the dragons suffered from it to various degrees.

Then one of the smaller dragons had awakened them all by squawking hoarsely. It had been a small orange dragon with stumpy legs and wings that were only stubs. If he had ever had a name, Sintara couldn’t recall it now. He had been trying to paw at his eyes that were crusted shut with mucus. His truncated front legs would not reach. With every distressed squawk he gave, he sprayed thick tendrils of phlegm. All the dragons had moved aside from him in disgust. By mid-morning he was dead, and a few moments later, all that remained of him was a smear of blood on the damp earth and a couple of fellow dragons with full bellies. By then, two of the others were wheezing and drooling mucus from their mouths and nostrils.

Drier weather brought an end to the malaise. All had suffered from it to some degree. Sintara suspected that the constantly wet riverbank and the mud they had to live in combined with the dense population had caused the sickness. If any of them had been able to fly, those ones would have left and she suspected, in doing so out-flown the contagion.

One dragon actually had left. Gresok had been the largest red, a male who was physically among the healthiest but mentally among the dullest. One afternoon, he had simply announced that he was leaving to find a better place, a city he’d seen in his dreams. Then he walked away, crashing through underbrush until they could not longer hear his passage. They’d let him go. Why not? He seemed to know what he wanted, and it would mean slightly more food for the rest of them when the human hunters meted out what they’d killed.

But no more than half a day had passed before they’d felt his dying thoughts. He cried out, not to them, but simply shouting his fury to himself. Humans had attacked him. That much was clear. And as they felt him die, two of the other dragons, Kalo and Ranculos, had charged off to follow his trail. They went, not to assist or avenge him, but only to claim his carcass as their rightful food. That night, they had returned to the riverbank. Neither had spoken of what they had done, but Sintara had her suspicions. Both had smelled of human blood as well as Gresok’s flesh. She suspected they’d come upon humans butchering the fallen Gresok, and included them in their feasting. She saw nothing wrong in that. Any human who dared to attack a dragon deserved to die himself. And dead, of what use was he, unless someone ate him? She didn’t see why leaving a human to be eaten by worms was more acceptable.

All of the dragons were well aware that it was better to cover all traces of such encounters. The humans were very poor at concealing their thoughts. The dragons were well aware of the anger and resentment that some felt toward them. Illogical as it was, it seemed that they preferred to have their dead eaten by fish rather than let a dragon have the use of the meat. Only a few afternoons ago, a group of humans had been putting the body of a dead relative into the river. She had waded out into the water and followed the weighted canvas packet as the current carried it until it sank under the water. She had retrieved it and dragged it ashore, well away from human eyes. She had eaten it, canvas covering and all. When she returned and realized how distressed the humans were, she had sought to save their feelings by denying she had eaten the corpse. They hadn’t believed her.

Their reaction made no sense to her. If the body had sunk to the bottom, fish and worms would have devoured it, tearing it to insignificant pieces. But because she had eaten the body, the human’s tiny store of memories had been preserved in her. True, most of the memories made little sense to her, and the woman had lived but a breath of time, only some fifty turnings of the seasons. Even so, something of her would go on. Did humans think it better that the woman’s body do no more than nourish another generation of sucker fish? Humans were so stupid.

Her dragon memories included a few scattered recollections of Elderlings. She wished they were clearer; they slipped and slid through her mind like a fish seen through murky water. The flavour of those memories offered tolerance, even fondness of such beings. They were useful and respectful creatures, willing to groom and greet dragons, to build their cities to accommodate them; they acknowledged the intelligence of dragons. How could sophisticated creatures such as Elderlings possibly be related to humans?

The soft-bodied little sacks of seawater that were supposed to tend the dragons now chattered and complained constantly about their simple tasks. They performed those duties so poorly that she and her fellows lived in abject misery. They deceived no one. They took no pleasure in tending the dragons. All the hairless tree monkeys truly thought about was despoiling Cassarick. The remains of the ancient Elderling city was buried nearly under the hatching grounds. They would plunder it as they had the buried city at Trehaug. Not only had they stripped it of its ornaments and carried off objects that they could not possibly comprehend, they had slain all but one of the dragons that the Elderlings had dragged into the dubious safety of their city right before that ancient catastrophe. Anger burned through her afresh as she thought of it.

Even now, some of the ‘liveships’ built from ‘wizardwood logs’ still existed, still served humans as dragon spirits incarnated into ship bodies. Even now, the humans pleaded ignorance as an excuse for the terrible slaughter they had wrought. When Sintara thought of the dragons that had waited so many years to hatch, only to be tumbled half-formed from their cases onto the cold stone floor, she swelled with anger. She felt her poison sacs fill and harden in her throat, and agitation filled her. The humans deserved to die for what they had done, every one of them.

From beside her, Mercor spoke. Despite his size and apparent physical strength, he seldom spoke or asserted himself in any way. A terrible sadness seemed to enervate him, draining him of all ambition and drive. When he did speak, the others found themselves pausing in whatever they were doing to listen to him. Sintara could not know what the others felt, but it annoyed her that she felt both drawn toward him and guilty about his great sadness. His voice made her memory itch, as if when he spoke, she should recall wonderful things, but could not. Tonight he said only, in his deep and sonorous voice, ‘Sintara. Let it go. Your anger is useless without a proper focus.’

It was another thing he did that bothered her. He spoke as if he could know her thoughts. ‘You know nothing of my anger,’ she hissed at him.

‘Don’t I?’ He shifted miserably in the muddy wallow where they slept. ‘I can smell your fury, and I know that your sacs swell with poison.’

‘I want to sleep!’ Kalo rumbled. His words were sharp with irritation, but not even he dared to confront Mercor directly.

On the edge of the huddled group of dragons, one of the small dim-witted ones, probably the green that could barely drag himself around, squeaked in his sleep. ‘Kelsingra! Kelsingra! There, in the distance!’

Kalo lifted his head on his long neck and roared in the green’s direction, ‘Be silent! I wish to sleep!’

‘You do sleep, already,’ Mercor replied, impervious to the big blue’s anger. ‘You sleep so deeply that you no longer dream.’ He lifted his head. He was not bigger than Kalo, but it was still a challenge. ‘Kelsingra!’ he suddenly trumpeted into the night.

All the dragons stirred. ‘Kelsingra!’ he bellowed again, and Sintara’s keen hearing picked up the distant fluting cries of humans disturbed from their evening slumber. ‘Kelsingra!’

Mercor threw the name of the ancient city up to the distant stars. ‘Kelsingra, I remember you! We all do, even those who wish we did not! Kelsingra, home of the Elderlings, home of the well of the silver waters and the wide stone plazas baking in the summer heat. The hillsides above the city teemed with game. Do not mock that one who dreams of you still, Kelsingra!’

‘I want to go to Kelsingra. I want to lift my wings and fly again.’ A voice rose from somewhere in the night.

‘Wings. Fly! Fly!’ The words were muffled and ill formed, but the longing of the dim-witted dragon who uttered them filled them with feeling.

‘Kelsingra,’ someone else groaned.

Sintara lowered her head, tucking it in close to her chest. She was ashamed for them and ashamed for herself. They sounded like penned cattle lowing before the slaughter begins. ‘Then go there,’ she muttered in disgust. ‘Just leave and go there.’

‘Would that we could,’ Mercor spoke the words with true longing. ‘But the way is long, even if we had wings that would bear us. And the path is uncertain. As serpents, we could barely find our way home. How much stranger must the land be now that lies between us and the place where Kelsingra used to be?’

‘Used to be,’ Kalo repeated. ‘So much used to be, and no longer is. It is useless to speak or think of any of it. I want to go back to sleep.’

‘Useless, perhaps, but nonetheless, we do speak of it. And some of us still dream of it. Just as some of us still dream of flying, and killing our own meat and battling for mates. Some of us still dream of living. You do not want to sleep, Kalo. You want to die.’

Kalo twitched as if struck by an arrow. Sintara felt the big dragon stiffen, sensed how his poison sacs suddenly swelled. A few moments ago, she had thought that resting between the two large males had been a place of safety. Now she perceived that she was in the thick of the danger, trapped between Sestican and Mercor. Kalo lifted his head high and glared down on Mercor. If he spat acid now, Mercor would be helpless to avoid it. And she would also be caught in the spray. She hunched her shoulders uselessly.

But Kalo spoke rather than exhaled poison. ‘Do not speak to me, Mercor. You know nothing of what I think or feel.’

‘Don’t I? I know more of you than you recall yourself, Kalo.’ Mercor suddenly threw his head back and bellowed. ‘I know you all! All of you! And I mourn what you are because I remember what you were and I know what you were meant to be!’

‘Quiet! We’re trying to sleep!’ This was no bellow of an outraged dragon, but the shrill cry of a frustrated human. Kalo turned his head toward the source of the sound and gave a roar of fury. Sestican, Ranculos and Mercor suddenly echoed him. When that blast of sound died away, a few of the dimmer dragons on the edge of the herd imitated it.

‘You be silent!’ Kalo trumpeted up at the human dwellings. ‘Dragons speak when they wish to speak! You have no control over us!’

‘Ah, but they do,’ Mercor said quietly. The very softness of his words seemed to bring all attention to him.

Kalo turned his head sharply. ‘You, perhaps, are controlled by humans. I am not.’

‘You do not, then, eat when they feed you? You do not remain here, where they have corralled us? You do not accept the future they plan for us, that we will remain here, dependent upon them, until we slowly die off and stop being a nuisance to them?’

Sintara found that, against her will, she was listening raptly to his words. They were frightening and challenging at the same time. When his voice stopped, the quieter sounds of the evening flowed in. She listened to the river lapping at the muddy shore, to the distant noises of humans and birds settling in the trees for the night, and to the sounds of dragons breathing. ‘What should we do then?’ she heard herself ask.

All heads turned toward her. She did not look at anyone except Mercor. The night had stolen the colours from his scales but she could make out his gleaming black eyes. ‘We should leave,’ he said quietly. ‘We should leave here and try to find our way to Kelsingra. Or to anywhere that is better than this.’

‘How?’ Sestican abruptly demanded. ‘Shall we knock down the trees that hem us in? Humans can slip between their trunks and find pathways through the swamp. But if you have not noticed, we are slightly larger than humans. Grest went blundering off, going not where he willed but only where the trees would permit him passage. There is no escape that way, only swamp and dimness and starvation. And poorly fed as we are, at least the humans bring us something to eat each day. If we left here, we’d starve.’

‘There’s no need for us to starve at all. We should eat the humans,’ someone on the edge of the herd suggested.

‘Be quiet if you cannot make sense,’ Sestican retorted. ‘If we eat the humans, once they are gone, we are still trapped here, with no food.’

‘They want us to leave.’ Kalo spoke suddenly, startling everyone.

‘Who does?’ Mercor demanded.

‘The humans. Their Rain Wild Council sent a man to speak. One of the feeders asked me to talk with him. He told the Council-man that I am the biggest of the dragons and therefore the leader. So he spoke to me. He wanted to know if I knew when or even if Tintaglia would return. I told him I did not. Then he said that they were very upset that someone had eaten a corpse out of the river, and that someone else had chased a worker down into the tunnels that go to the buried city. And he said they were running out of ways to feed us. He said that his hunters have hunted out all the large meat for miles around, and that the fish runs are nearly over for the year. He said the Council wishes us to call Tintaglia, to let her know that the Council demands that she return to help them solve this difficulty.’

In the darkness, several of the dragons snorted with contempt for such foolishness.

Mercor spoke with disdain. ‘Call Tintaglia. As if she would respond to us. Kalo, why did you not speak of this before?’

‘They told me nothing that we do not all know already. Why bother repeating it? They are the ones who refuse to accept what they already know. Tintaglia’s not coming back,’ Kalo confirmed bitterly. ‘She has no reason to. She has found a mate. Together they are free to fly and hunt wherever they will. In a decade or two, when her time is ripe, she will lay her eggs and when they hatch, there will be a new generation of serpents growing. She has no need of us any longer. She only helped us stay alive because we were her last resort. And now we are not. If Tintaglia had had a mate at the time we emerged from our cases, she would have despised us. She knows as well as we all do that we are not fit to live.’

‘But live we do!’ Mercor broke in angrily on Kalo’s rant. ‘And dragons we are. Not slaves, not pets. Nor are we cattle, for humans to slaughter and butcher and sell off to the highest bidder.’

Sestican flared the diminutive spikes on his neck. ‘Who even dares think of such a thing!’

‘Oh, let us not be fools as well as cripples,’ Mercor returned sarcastically. ‘There are plenty of humans who are unable to comprehend us when we speak to them. And some of them judge us little more than beasts, and unhealthy ones at that. I’ve overheard their words; there are those who would buy our flesh, our scales, our teeth, any parts of our bodies for their elixirs and potions. What do you think happened to that poor fool Gresok? Kalo and Ranculos know, even if Kalo chooses to pretend ignorance. Humans killed him, thinking to butcher him for trophies. They did not know we would be able to sense him dying. How many of them were there, Kalo? Enough humans to make you a good meal even after you’d devoured Gresok?’

‘There were three.’ Ranculos was the one who spoke. ‘Three we caught, and one who fled.’

‘Were they Rain Wilders?’ Mercor demanded.

Ranculos blew out a snort of disdain. ‘I did not ask them. They were guilty of slaying a dragon, and I saw that they paid for it.’

‘A pity we do not know. We might have a better idea of how much we can trust the Rain Wilders if we knew. Because we are going to need their help, much as it distresses me to say so.’

‘Their help? Their help is next to worthless. They bring us food that is half rotted or merely the scraps of their kill. And there is never enough of it. What can humans help us with?’

Mercor’s reply was deceptively placid. ‘They can help us go to Kelsingra.’

A chorus of dragons replied all at once.

‘Kelsingra may not even exist any more.’

‘We don’t know where it is. Our memories are of small use in finding our way there. We could not have found our way here to the cocooning grounds unassisted. Everything is changed.’

‘Why would humans help us go to Kelsingra?’

‘Kelsingra! Kelsingra! Kelsingra!’ prattled the depraved dragon at the edge of the huddle.

‘Make that fool be silent!’ Kalo roared, and there was a sudden yelp of pain as someone did just that. ‘Why would humans help us go to Kelsingra?’ he repeated.

‘Because we would make them think it was their own idea. Because we would make them want to take us there.’

‘How? Why?’

It was full dark now. Even Sintara’s keen eyes could not see Mercor’s face but his amusement filled his voice. ‘We would make them greedy. You have seen how willingly they dig and delve here in the hopes of unearthing Elderling treasure. We would tell them that Kelsingra was three times the size of Cassarick and that the Elderling treasury was there.’

‘Elderling treasury?’ Kalo asked.

‘We would lie to them,’ Mercor explained patiently. ‘To make them want to take us there. We know they want to be rid of us. If we leave it to them, they will let us slowly starve to death or leave us living in our own filth until disease claims us. This way, we offer them the chance to be rid of us, and to profit at the same time. They will be willing to help us, because they will think we are guiding them to riches.’

‘But we don’t know the way,’ Kalo bellowed in frustration. ‘And if they knew of an Elderling city to plunder, they would have done so by now. So they don’t know where Kelsingra is either.’ He lowered his voice and added dismally, ‘Everything is changed, Mercor. Kelsingra may be buried under mud and trees just as Trehaug and Cassarick are now. Even if we could find our way back to it, what good would it do us?’

‘Kelsingra was at a much higher elevation than either Trehaug or Cassarick. Do not you recall the view from the mountain cliffs behind the city? Perhaps the mud that flowed and buried these cities did not cover Kelsingra. Or perhaps it was upstream of the mudflow. Anything is possible. It is even conceivable that Elderlings survived there. Not dragons, no, for if any of the dragons had lived, we would have heard them by now. But the city may still be there, and the fertile croplands, and the plain beyond teeming with antelope and other herd beasts. It may all be there, just waiting for us to return.’

‘Or nothing might be there,’ Kalo replied sourly.

‘Well, nothing is what we have here, so what do we have to lose?’ Mercor demanded stolidly.

‘Why do we need the humans’ help at all?’ Sintara asked into the quiet. ‘If we wish to go to Kelsingra, why don’t we just go?’

‘As humiliating as it is to admit it, we will require their help. Some of us are barely able to limp about this mud flat. None of us can hunt enough to sustain ourselves. We are dragons, and we are meant to be free to the land and the sky. Without healthy bodies and the use of our wings, we cannot hunt. Some fish we can catch for ourselves, when the runs are thick. But we need humans to hunt for us, and to help those of us who are feeble of body or mind.’

‘Why not just leave the weaklings behind?’ Kalo asked.

Mercor snorted his disgust for such an idea. ‘And let the humans butcher them and sell off their parts? Let them discover that, yes, dragon liver does have amazing healing powers when dried and fed to a human? Let them discover the elixir in our blood? Let them discover what wondrous sharp tools they can make from our claws? Let them find that, yes, those myths have a sound basis in reality? And then, in no time at all, they would come after us. No, Kalo. No dragon, no matter how feeble, is prey for a human. And we are too few to discard so casually any of our race. Nor can we afford to abandon them as meat or as a source of memories for the rest of us. On that we must be united. So when we go, we must take every dragon with us. And we must demand that humans accompany us, to help provide meat for us until we reach a place where we can provide for ourselves.’

‘And where might that be?’ Sestican demanded sourly.

‘Kelsingra. At best. A place more congenial to dragons, with better hunting, at worst.’

‘We don’t know the way.’

‘We know it isn’t here,’ Mercor replied tranquilly. ‘We know Kelsingra was along the river and upstream of Cassarick. So, we begin by going up the river.’

‘The river has shifted and changed. Where once it flowed narrow and swift between plains rich with game, now it is wide and meanders through a bogland of trees and brush. Humans, light as they are, still cannot move easily through this region. And who knows what has become of the lands between here and the mountains? A score of rivers and streams once fed into this river. Do they still exist? Have they, too, shifted in their courses? It is hopeless. In all the time that these humans have lived here, they haven’t explored the upper reaches of the river. They want to find dry, open land as badly was we do. If humans could travel in that direction, they would have trekked up the river long ago, and if Kelsingra still existed for them to find, they would have discovered it by now. You want us to leave what little safety and food we have, journey through a bogland in the hopes of eventually finding solid land and Kelsingra. It’s a foolish dream, Mercor. We’ll all just die on the way to a mirage.’

‘So, Kalo, you would prefer to just die here?’

‘Why not?’ the big dragon challenged him sarcastically.

‘Because I, for one, would prefer to die as a free creature rather than as cattle. I’d like a chance to hunt again, to feel hot sand against my scales again. I’d like to drink deeply of the silvery wells of Kelsingra. If I must die, I’d like to die as a dragon rather than whatever pathetic thing it is that we’ve become.’

‘And I’d like to sleep!’ Kalo snapped.

‘Sleep, then,’ Mercor replied quietly. ‘It’s good practice for death.’

His final words seemed to end all conversation. The dragons shifted and settled and shifted again, each looking, Sintara thought, for a comfortable spot that no longer existed. It was not just that the cold, damp earth was uncomfortable; it was that Mercor’s words had destroyed the small amount of acceptance that the dragons had built for their situation. The anger and her stubborn endurance now seemed more like cowardice and resignation.

Since Sintara had emerged from her case, she had known that everything in her life was wrong. Mercor’s proposal filled her thoughts with possibilities. Cautiously, unwilling to wake the others, she extended her puny wings, and stretched her neck to allow herself to groom them. Had they grown at all? Nightly she waited for dark and performed this senseless ritual. Night after night, she pretended to herself that they had grown and would continue to grow. They were laughable things, scarcely a third of the size they should have been. Flapping them scarcely stirred a breeze, let alone lifted her bulk off the ground. Carefully, quietly, she folded them back to her body.

Wings made a dragon, she thought. Without wings, she could not hunt successfully, and could never hope to mate. Indignation roiled suddenly through her. Only a few weeks ago, stretched out to sleep in a small band of sunlight, she had been rudely awakened when Dortean had tried to mount her. She had wakened with a roar of outrage. He was an orange, with stumpy legs and a thin tail. That he had even attempted to mate with her was humiliation enough. He was stupid and pathetic. To awaken to his muddy legs straddling her back as he hunched hopefully at her was a disgusting contrast to all her stored memories of dragons mating in flight.

Usually males fought for a female once she had indicated she was willing. And when the strongest male defeated his rivals and rose to join her in flight, he usually had to face the final challenge of dominating the female. Dragon queens did not mate with weaklings. Nor would a drake accept as a mate a docile female. Why mingle one’s bloodline with that of a bovine female, whose offspring might lack the true fire of a dragon? So to be straddled and humped by a dim-witted and deformed creature was an insult beyond bearing. She had rounded on him, snapping and slapping at him ineffectually with her dwarfed wings. At first, it had more inflamed than deterred him. He had continued to come at her, muddy-necked and with his small eyes blazing with febrile lust. He had tried to clutch her to him, but a desperate swipe of her tail had knocked him off his feet and into the ever-present mud. Misshapen as he was, he could not easily right himself, and she had stormed away from him, down to the river, to wash his muddy paw prints from her back and haunches. She wished the acid waters of the river could have washed the humiliation from her as well.

She settled herself for sleep, but it did not come to her. Instead, memories flickered in her mind, filling her with sadness. Memories of flight, of mating, of the distant beaches where her ancestors had laid their eggs and then basked on the hot sand. Terrible longings replaced her sadness. ‘Kelsingra,’ she said softly to herself, and to her surprise, memories of the place flooded her. To describe it as a city by the river could not begin to do it justice. It had been a place constructed as much with the mind and heart as with stone and beam. The entire city had been laid out to reflect that both Elderling and dragon lived amicably there. The streets had been wide, the doors to the public buildings ample, and the art on those walls and around the fountains had celebrated the companionship enjoyed by both dragons and Elderlings.

And there was something else, she recalled slowly. There was a well there, a well deeper than the river that bordered the city. A bucket dropped into its depths sank past ordinary water to a deeper river of a most extraordinary substance. Even a tiny amount of it was dangerously intoxicating for an Elderling and possibly fatal for a human. But dragons could drink from it. She closed her eyes and let the old memories of other dragons rise to the forefront of her mind. An Elderling woman, gowned in green and gold, turned the crank on the windlass of a well, and brought up a bucket full of gleaming silver drink. It was emptied into a polished trough, and another brought up, and another, until the vessel of polished stone brimmed with silver. In her dreams Sintara drank of it, the silver running through her veins, filling her heart with song and her mind with poetry. She allowed herself to float on the exhilarating memories leaving the reality of her present life behind.

In this other remembered life, she was a queen dragon who preened herself, her silver-dripping muzzle spreading the fine sheen over her feathery scales. The green-and-gold robed woman rejoiced in letting her drink her fill of the silvery stuff. Together they left the well and strolled through the bright sunlit streets of the city. They passed lavish squares where fountains leapt and played, and brightly-robed denizens of the city greeted her with bows and curtsies. The market was in full voice, filled with the songs of minstrels and the dickering of merchants and customers. Scents of cooking meat and sacks of spices, rare perfumes and pungent herbs filled her nostrils. When she and her companion reached the river’s edge, they bid each other the fond farewells that old friends share. And then the queen dragon spread and limbered her gleaming scarlet wings. She crouched low on her powerful hindquarters and then sprang effortlessly into the air. Three, four, five beats of her wings and the wind off the river captured her and flung her aloft. She caught the current of warm summer air and soared on it.

The crimson queen blinked transparent lids over her whirling gold eyes. The wind slapped her, but the blow changed to a caress as she banked into it and rode it ever higher. Warm summer sunlight kissed her back, and the wide world spread out below her. It was a golden land, a wide river valley that gave, on both sides, to rolling hills dotted with oak groves and then to steeper cliffs and finally craggy mountains. On the flat lands along the river, cultivated fields of grain alternated with pastures where kine and sheep grazed. A fine road of smooth black stone bordered one side of the river, with tributary paths and by-ways wandering out to the more rural districts. Beyond the settlements of humanity, in the foothills and the narrow valleys that threaded back into the mountains, game was plentiful.

On the updraughts over the hills, other dragons soared, their glistening hides winking like jewels in the summer sunlight. One, a pale-green dragon with gold mottling on his haunches and shoulders, trumpeted to her. A thrill ran through her as she recognized her most recent mate. She answered his greeting, and saw him bank to meet her. As soon as he had committed to his turn, she mocked him with a shrill call and beat her own wings powerfully to gain altitude. He gave a deep cry of challenge to her in response and came after her.

Rain. Cold sleeting rain suddenly spattered on her back with the force of a shower of pebbles. Sintara’s eyes flew open, the dream and the respite it had brought her shattered. In the next moment, the cold water was coursing down her flanks and sides. All around her in the darkness, dragons shifted and reluctantly huddled closer to one another. Sorrow vied with fury in her. ‘Kelsingra,’ she promised herself aloud. ‘Kelsingra.’

In the darkness, the voices of the other dragons echoed hers.