Читать книгу The Rain Wild Chronicles: The Complete 4-Book Collection - Робин Хобб - Страница 24

‘Because I want to go.’ She spoke each word crisply and precisely. ‘Because, five years ago, you promised me I could. The promise was given, in fact, on the same day that you gave me this scroll.’ Alise leaned across her over-sized desk to tap the glass-topped rosewood box lined with silk in which the scroll was displayed and protected. She refrained from handling it as much as possible. Even the necessary work of transcribing it had taken a toll. When she needed to, she consulted the careful copy she had made of the precious work.

‘I’ve scarcely returned home from my travel, my dear. Cannot I have a few days to think on this? Quite honestly, I will admit that I had forgotten I’d promised you such a trip. The Rain Wilds!’ He sounded amazed.

Hest’s words were not precisely accurate. He had returned from his latest trading expedition to Chalced yesterday afternoon. But Alise had learned, over the years of their marriage, that Hest’s return to Bingtown on any given day did not necessarily match his return to the home they shared. As he had so often told her, there were many matters to settle at the tariff docks, merchants to contact immediately to inform them of goods he had secured on his latest venture, and often the sales of those goods took place within hours of their touching the docks. Such transactions necessitated the wine and fine dinner and late-night conversation that smoothed the way for commerce in Bingtown. Yesterday, she had become aware that he had arrived back in town when his travelling trunks were brought up to the house, but when both luncheon and dinner had passed with no sign of him, she had not bothered to wait up. Yesterday had been the fifth anniversary of their wedding. She wondered if he remembered it with the same degree of regret that she did, and then had laughed aloud at the idea that Hest might remember their anniversary at all. That night, she had sought her own bed at her usual late hour, and as they did not share a chamber except on the occasions when he chose to visit hers, she had been unaware of his return home. At breakfast, the only evidence that the master of the house had returned was the presence of his favourite garlic sausages on the sideboard, and the large pot of tea that had joined her favoured coffee on the heavy silver service tray. Of Hest himself, there had been no sign.

At mid-morning, his secretary Sedric had visited her study, to ask if any vital invitations were still pending, and to inquire if any other important missives had arrived during the master’s absence. Sedric had spoken formally, but smiled as he did so, and after a moment his good nature and charm had forced her to return that courtesy. As annoyed as she was with Hest, she would not take it out on his secretary. Sedric had that effect on most people. Although he was only a couple of years younger than Hest and older than Alise, she could not help thinking of him as a boy. It wasn’t only that she’d known him since childhood when she and his sister Sophie had been close friends. Even though he was older than both of them, they had still treated him as if he were younger, for so he had always seemed to Alise. There was a gentleness to him that she’d never seen in other men. He’d always been willing to pause in his day and listen to their girlish concerns. Such attention from an older boy had been flattering.

He was, she reflected, still a favourite with her. His attentiveness and interest in her conversation at meals often eased the sting of Hest’s near-contempt for her thoughts. Not only his manner but his appearance was always charming. His head of gleaming brown curls was perpetually tousled in an artlessly perfect way. His eyes were always bright, never showing the effects of a late night spent accompanying his master to whatever gambling parlour or theatre Hest’s latest merchant partner favoured. No matter how short the notice, Sedric was always able to rise to the occasion, appearing impeccably clad and groomed and yet still retaining an easy manner that suggested it was effortless for him.

Alise had long since ceased to wonder why Hest made Sedric his constant companion. In any social situation, the man was an asset. Born of Trader stock himself, he moved easily in Bingtown society and with acumen when Hest was dealing with his trading partners. There had been a flurry of gossip when Hest had offered Sedric a position as his secretary; it was obviously beneath his perceived social position, no matter how poor his family had become. Alise had been a bit startled when Sedric accepted it. But in the years since then, all had come to see that he was far more than a humble servant. He had proven himself as an excellent secretary to Hest and certainly as an affable and entertaining comrade on the long sea trips that Hest had to undertake yearly. He advised and assisted Hest in matters of dress and grooming. When Hest’s sometimes abrupt manner gave offence or cooled a budding business relationship, Sedric artfully employed his tact and charm to set things to rights.

And when Hest was home, Sedric’s affable presence at her table was something that Alise greatly enjoyed. He excelled at all social occasions from dinners to cards to long afternoon teas. As she was prone to be a listener rather than a talker, Sedric enlivened their meals with his jests, wry observations of their latest travel disasters and gentle harrying of Hest. Sometimes it seemed to her that it was only due to Sedric that she knew her husband at all.

Did she know him at all? She watched Hest now as he smiled distantly at her, so certain that he could postpone this discussion with her. Well they both knew that if he could procrastinate long enough, he’d be off on one of his trading trips again and she’d once more be left behind at home. She firmed her courage and replied to him, ‘Perhaps you have forgotten that you promised me that one day I should visit the Rain Wilds and see dragons for myself. But I have not forgotten your promise.’

‘Nor outgrown your desire for it?’ he asked her gently.

She flinched at the barb, wondering, as she frequently did, if he was aware of how often his words stung her. ‘Outgrown?’ she asked him quietly, her voice going wooden.

He came back into the room. He had not entered it in search of her. Rather he had come in quietly, selected a book from the shelves, and attempted to leave just as covertly. He could walk so softly. If she had not chanced to lift her head, she would never have known he’d been there. Her words had detained him just as he’d stepped outside the door. Now he closed it firmly behind him. The book he’d chosen was still in his hands. It was an expensive one, she noted, bound in the new way. He turned it gently as he mused over her question.

‘Well, my dear, you know that times have changed. Dragons were quite fashionable the year we were wed, but that was five years ago. Tintaglia had only recently appeared, and Bingtown was just emerging from the ashes, so to speak. Talk of dragons and Elderlings and new treasure cities as well as our independence from Jamaillia – well, it was a heady mix, was it not? All the ladies in their Elderling cosmetics and every fabric patterned to look like scales! It was no wonder dragons fired your imagination. You’d come of age in a harsh time in Bingtown. You needed to escape reality and what could be a better fantasy than tales of Elderlings and dragons? Trade was in a shambles with the New Traders and their slave labour undercutting all our established ways. Your family fortunes were suffering. And then we had a war. If Tintaglia hadn’t appeared and come to our aid, well, I think we’d all be speaking Chalcedean now. And then she locked us into that bargain that we’d help her serpents get up the river and tend the new dragons when they hatched. Well, we certainly discovered that the reality of a dragon was far different from any fantasy you might have imagined.’

He gave a small snort of disdain. Tucking his book under his arm, he wandered across the room to the windows and looked out over the gardens below. ‘We were fools,’ he said quietly. ‘Thinking we could negotiate with a dragon! Well, she got the best of us, didn’t she? We’re as close to being at true peace with Chalced now as we’ve ever been, trade is rebuilding, Bingtown rejuvenating, and Tintaglia has found a mate for herself and hardly ever comes to call. It should be a better life and time for everyone! But the Rain Wilders are still dealing with her errant offspring and the expenses they create. They eat constantly, trample the earth to muck, foul everywhere, and hamper efforts to explore the underground ruins. They are pathetic cripples, unable to hunt or care for themselves. All the Traders must contribute to pay for hunters to keep them fed. With no return for us! No one thought to write an end clause for that agreement. And from what I hear, it will never change. Those sorry creatures will never be able to take care of themselves, and who knows how long they will live? We’ve waited five years for them to grow up and become independent. They haven’t. It would be a mercy to put them down.’

‘And profitable, too,’ Alise said coldly. She felt silence growing in her. Sometimes it reminded her of a fast-growing ivy; silence covered her and cloaked her and she suspected that one day she would smother in the silences Hest could create. It was an effort to break through that strangling quiet, but she did it. ‘All have heard how much the Duke of Chalced would pay for even one scale of a real dragon. Think how much he’d give for a whole carcass.’ When she thrust a cutting remark into one of Hest’s pauses, it was like trying to stab a knife into hardwood. It never seemed to stick and left scarcely a mark.

Now he turned toward her as if startled. ‘Did I hurt your feelings, my dear? I didn’t mean to. I forgot how sentimental you are about those creatures.’ He smiled at her disarmingly. ‘Perhaps I’m too much the Trader this day. You should expect it of me when I’ve just returned from a trip. It’s all I talked about with anyone for the last two months. Profitability and tightly-written contracts and well-negotiated bargains. I’m afraid that’s what fills my mind.’

‘Of course,’ she said, looking down at her desk. And, Of course she said to herself as her anger slipped away from her. It wasn’t gone, only sunken in the bog of uncertainty that engulfed her life. How could she hold onto her anger when, in an instant, he could sidestep it in a way that made her feel it was unjustified? He had been preoccupied, that was all. He was a busy man, immersed in trade negotiations and contracts and social details. He undertook those things for both of them, so that she could live in the quiet social backwater that she seemed to prefer. She could not expect him to be perfectly tuned to her life. More than once, he had gently pointed out to her that she always seemed to put the worst possible interpretation on his words whenever they had even the mildest disagreement. More than once, he had expressed bewilderment that she sometimes resented how he sheltered her.

A tiny childish part of her stamped and gritted her teeth. And he has side-stepped your question as well. Demand an answer. No. Just tell him you are going. You have the right. Just tell him that.

Hest was already drifting toward the door. He stopped by a tobacco humidor, opened it and scowled. Evidently the servants had not replenished it since his return.

‘I’ve planned my journey to the Rain Wilds. I’ll be departing at the end of this month.’ The words leapt out of her mouth. Lies, every one of them. She’d made no specific plans, only dreamed.

He turned to look at her, his brows arched in surprise. ‘Indeed.’

‘Yes,’ she asserted. ‘It’s a good time to travel to the Rain Wilds, or so I’m told.’

‘Alone?’ he asked, sounding scandalized. And a moment later, annoyed as he said, ‘I’ve made commitments of my own, my dear. It would be impossible for me to break them. I can’t go with you at the end of the month.’

‘I hadn’t given that part much thought,’ she admitted. Any thought at all. ‘I’m sure I can find an appropriate companion for the journey.’ She wasn’t sure of that at all. It had never occurred to her that she might require such a person. She had thought, somehow, that marriage had put her beyond the need for chaperonage. ‘I cannot imagine that you could doubt my fidelity to you,’ she observed. ‘I am not chaperoned in the months when you are away on your trading journeys. Why should I be chaperoned when I travel?’

‘Perhaps we should avoid the topic of “doubting” anyone’s “fidelity”,’ he observed cuttingly. ‘Or perhaps we should discuss it in terms of presenting a proper appearance. After all, it takes very little for someone to assemble tiny bits of “evidence” and then see wrongdoing where none exists.’

She looked away from him. He seldom missed a chance to remind her of her ill-founded allegations against him. She pushed the stinging memory of that humiliating day away and struggled to think of a sufficiently respectable matron to accompany her as chaperone. ‘I suppose I could ask Sedric’s sister Sophie. But I have heard she is with child and in delicate health, not disposed to visit, let alone travel.’

‘Ah. Her husband, I see, is far more fortunate than I am in that regard. And your health, Alise?’

‘My health is excellent,’ she replied pointedly.

Hest shook his head in disappointment. He cleared his throat and then asked wryly, ‘I am to assume, then, that our latest efforts have come to naught?’

‘I’m not pregnant,’ she said bluntly. ‘I assure you if I were it would be the first piece of news I would give you.’ She stopped short of asking him how he could possibly imagine she would be pregnant. He’d been away three months, and in the two months he had been home prior to that, he’d visited her bedchamber exactly twice. The infrequency and brevity of his performances were more relief than disappointment now. He visited her, she thought, with the regularity of a man performing a scheduled task, and with all the enthusiasm. Sometimes she wondered if he kept a ledger of his efforts. She imagined him ticking an item on his social calendar. Attempted impregnation. Results still in doubt. It humiliated her now to recall her brief and girlish infatuation with him before their wedding.

In the months and then years that had passed since she had realized that neither love nor lust would have a place in her marriage, she had never denied herself anything in her quest for knowledge. To balance that, she had never denied Hest on the occasions when he came to her chambers to assert his marital rights. She had never wept over his lack of romantic interest in her, nor tried to charm him into changing his mind. She had made only two failed and shameful attempts to pique his sexual interest in her. She did not allow herself to dwell on those humiliating memories. They had prompted him to a mocking cruelty that had branded those two nights forever in her memory. No. Better to submit, almost ignore his efforts, for then his services to her remained brief and perfunctory.

After each visit that he paid her, he waited until she had reported the failure of it before he visited her again. Only twice in the five years that they had been married had she announced a pregnancy. Each time, Hest had greeted the event with great excitement, only to express his frustration and annoyance with her when, a few months later, she had miscarried.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘You’ve ruined this shirt.’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Dishonourable?’ Hest’s voice was chill, disbelieving. ‘Dishonourable?’ he repeated, and Sedric felt his breathing grow shallower.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘What pretence?’ Hest asked him.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘You can well afford it, Hest! Just the other day, I was listening to Braddock talking about how much his wife spends on dresses, and little parties for her friends and her constant refurbishing of their home. Alise costs you none of that; she lives as simply as can be, except for the materials she requires for her scholarly pursuits. Really, Hest, don’t you feel you owe her that outlet, after all the years she has waited? So let her make her journey. You’ve plenty of connections up the Rain Wild River. A word from you would probably win her free passage on the Goldendown or any other liveship. And I can think of half a dozen Rain Wild Traders who would be delighted to offer her hospitality, no matter how eccentric she might be. They’d do it to gain favour with you and—’

‘Favour I’d later have to pay back. And you said it just now, yourself. “No matter how eccentric she might seem!” There’s a fine recommendation for me. I can hear it now. “Oh, yes, we had Hest Finbok’s mad wife come stay with us. Spent all her time nosing about in the ruins and chatting up the dragons. Delightful woman. Her brain is riddled as a tree full of beetles.”’

Hest was adept at voices and mannerisms. Upset as he was with him, still Sedric had to stifle the impulse to smile as his friend suddenly became a gossipy old woman with a swampy Rain Wilds accent. He held his tongue and shook his head at him rebukingly.

Hest spoke decisively. ‘I don’t care what she says or what she has arranged. She can’t go. Certainly not alone.’

Sedric found a voice. ‘Then don’t send her off alone. See this as the opportunity it is! Go to the Rain Wilds with her. Freshen up your trade contracts there; it must be six years since you last visited—’

‘And for very good reasons. Sedric, you cannot imagine how that river smells. Nor the endless gloom of that forest. People living in houses made of paper and sticks, eating lizards and bugs. And half of them are touched by the Rain Wilds in ways that make me shudder just to look at them. I can’t help myself. No. Going face to face with the Rain Wild Traders would only damage my contacts there, not strengthen them.’

Sedric folded his lips for a moment and then ventured a topic that had been at the back of his mind for some time. ‘Do you remember what Begasti Cored said to us on our last visit to Chalced? That a merchant who could provide the Duke of Chalced with even the smallest part of a dragon could be a rich man to the end of his days?’

‘Begasti Cored. The bald merchant with the horrible breath?’

‘The bald, extremely rich merchant with the horrible breath,’ Sedric corrected him, grinning. ‘The one who has founded his fortune not on trading vast amounts of anything, but, as he told us, in delivering a small amount of something very rare to the right man at the right time.’

Hest gave a martyred sigh. ‘Sedric, those tales have been circulating for the last year and a half. All know the Duke of Chalced is aging, and perhaps dying. He thrashes about, trying every quackery under the sun in hopes of a cure for death.’

‘And he has the money to do so. Hest, if you travelled to the Rain Wilds with Alise, you’d have the perfect excuse to get close to the dragons and those who tend them. Alise has contacts with them; I know she does, I’ve sent off her missives for her and brought dozens of posts back to her. If she goes, you know she’ll manage to get to Cassarick, and she’ll go directly to the dragon grounds. She’ll be as close to the beasts as anyone can get.’ He found he had lowered his voice as he said, ‘A few shed scales. A vial of blood. A tooth. Who knows what you might be able to bring back? What we do know is that anything you acquired would be worth, not a small fortune, but a very large one.’ Sedric let the clothing he had been folding fall from his hands. He sank down onto Hest’s bed and said quietly, ‘With that much money, a man could go anywhere. He could live any way he liked and be above rebuke. Enough money will buy that. Respectability regardless of what you do.’ He stared through the walls of the chamber into an invisible distance and dreamed.

Hest’s voice snapped him back to the here and now. ‘Do you ever listen to a word I say? I like where I live and how I live now. No one rebukes me. Why would I risk the very comfortable life I have here? Idiocy! I have no desire to traffic in dragon body parts. That is something that I could well be rebuked for.’

‘We’ve trafficked in other articles far stranger for less money!’ There were words that died in his throat unspoken. What that money could mean to him, to both of them. The life it could buy, far from Bingtown. Hest either could not or refused to consider the possibility.

Hest was unswayed by Sedric’s words. ‘Just now you spoke of respectability. I am respectable now! Will that be so if people see my wife travelling alone to the Rain Wilds? What will they think she is really seeking? Do you think I don’t know that people shake their heads and pity us, that she has not yet borne a child? And if she goes trotting off alone to the Rain Wilds, what will the gossip tongues wag then?’

‘Oh, for Sa’s sake, Hest! She isn’t the first Bingtown woman to have trouble conceiving! Why do you think they call this place the Cursed Shores? Hard enough for a family to keep its name alive here, let alone flourish. No one thinks anything about your still being childless, save to offer you sympathy! Look around the town. You’re not alone! And as to her travelling by herself, well I’ve just shown you the solution: take her yourself. Or find her a companion then, if you will not take the time to escort her yourself. It’s easily enough done!’

‘Fine, then!’ Hest all but spat the words. As quickly as that, he had gone from trying to win Sedric with his antics to giving off sparks of anger. ‘I shall let her go. I shall let her dash off to the Rain Wilds and content her poor little soul with dithering about dragons and Elderlings. I shall let her spill coins from my purse as if it has no bottom. And you are right, dear, dear Sedric. I shall have no trouble at all finding an appropriate companion for her. You’ve told me often enough this night what a wonderful friend she has been to you! So, you shall surely enjoy your trip to the Rain Wilds with her. Evidently you’ve become bored with being secretary to such a dishonourable, selfish man as myself. So serve Alise. Be her secretary. Scribble notes for her and carry her bags. Sniff about in the muck for a dropped dragon scale. It will spare me the bother of having to look at either of you for a month! I have a journey of my own to contemplate. And it seems that I must find some affable companions to share it with me.’ As if that settled the matter completely, Hest crossed to the room and dropped back into the chair before his writing desk. He took up his pen and studied the pages before him as if Sedric did not exist.

For a moment, Sedric could not speak. Then, ‘Hest, you cannot mean that!’ he gasped.

But the other man ignored him, and Sedric knew with sudden certainty that he did.