Читать книгу The Rain Wild Chronicles: The Complete 4-Book Collection - Робин Хобб - Страница 34

He couldn’t believe she had done it. Just couldn’t believe it. This woman was not the Alise Kincarron he had grown up with! She wasn’t even the Alise Finbok he’d frequently dined with for the last five years. He wasn’t sure where this domineering vixen had come from, but he’d be glad to see her depart. If it hadn’t been so important for him to accompany her when she visited the dragons, he never would have allowed her to go this far.

He leaned on the railing beside her. To her left, the disgusting Captain Leftrin matched her posture, so close that he was practically touching her, while she spouted her infatuated nonsense about the dragons. Well, let her have a day or two of it. Angry as he felt toward her right now, he still dreaded the tasks that were before him. He’d go ashore with her and act as her secretary while she ‘interviewed’ the lumbering beasts down there. Soon enough, she’d realize what they were, and that would be the end of it. He thought of her inevitable disillusionment and almost felt sympathy for her. He’d been foolish even to argue with her earlier when she’d proposed her wild dream of accompanying the captain and the dragons on their trek upriver. He just should have nodded and agreed. He’d listened to what Trell and his wife had to say about the dragons. This adventure wasn’t going to materialize as Alise had always imagined it. And when she came to him, a night or two hence, crestfallen and disappointed, he’d be ready to comfort her and find passage for the two of them back home. All he had to do was maintain his patience and wait. And not vomit as Leftrin slimed along after her.

He glanced across at them again. She was looking up at Leftrin and smiling. Was she infatuated with that grizzled water rat? It didn’t seem possible. Perhaps she construed the man’s braying laugh and extravagant compliments as the epitome of rustic charm. After all, Alise had had few opportunities to sample social interchange with a wide variety of men. Maybe his very coarseness appealed to her. He knew her well enough to know that Hest was in no danger of losing her to anyone. Even if she was not happy with her husband, she was far too tightly laced even to consider betraying him. So let her flirt a bit, let her think she was being a woman of the world on this dismal journey. Though why she could possibly want to dally with an old walrus like Leftrin eluded him. How could he compare to the elegant Hest?

At the thought of Hest, his spirits sank again. Where was he now, what was he doing? Who was sharing his table and witty observations? What exotic port had attracted him, what extravagant and unusual cargo had he already purchased? He closed his eyes for a moment and could clearly imagine Hest loading his pipe after a fine meal in excellent accommodations. Would Hest even wonder what Sedric was enduring on his swamp boat journey up a mosquito-infested river? He probably did, and probably chortled with joy each time Sedric came to his mind. It stung even worse to imagine Hest sharing his amusement with Wollom and Jaff and the insidious Redding Cope. He imagined Cope doing one of his infuriating imitations. ‘This is Sedric, enjoying the mosquitoes.’ And then that pudgy little excuse for a man would slap himself and leap about and be rewarded with Hest’s laughter. Even to imagine it was intolerable. He realized he was grinding his teeth and with an effort calmed his face. This whole misadventure was Hest’s doing, and an entirely unreasonable punishment for the sin of simply speaking his mind. All he had wanted was for Hest to be a bit kinder to Alise. And for his troubles, he had not only been exiled by Hest but now was hijacked by Alise to accompany her even deeper into this uncivilized wasteland.

Unmindful of Sedric’s displeasure, Alise was chattering away with the goat-man at her left elbow. For a moment, he let his mind follow her words. ‘Look at her. The sun soaks right into her and shines back out of her. She’s magnificent.’

Sedric made a mildly agreeable noise and let her dither on. The beach didn’t merit the name. It was merely a slope of trampled and sun-baked mud that went down to the river’s edge. Soon enough, he’d have to be out there, following Alise about and taking notes for her. Traipsing around the piles of dragon dung and river flotsam. Ruining his boots, most likely. As soon as the men finished tying up or whatever they were doing, Alise would want to go ashore. He’d probably best go into his ‘room’ and see about finding his tools.

‘Yes. Yes, I was! You are absolutely glorious!’ Alise shouted the words.

Sedric opened his eyes. Alise looked transported by joy. Beneath her multitude of freckles, her cheeks were flushed. She clasped her hands to her bosom as if to hold her thundering heart inside her chest. She turned to him, and he could see in her eyes that she had completely forgotten their earlier disagreement in her excitement. Seemingly transfixed, she exclaimed, ‘Sedric, she spoke to me! The blue dragon. She spoke to me!’

He let his eyes rove over the spectacle of reptilian creatures that sprawled or prowled on the muddy shore. ‘Which blue one?’ he asked her at last.

‘The queen. The largest blue queen.’ She sounded as if she could not get her breath. She lifted her voice again. ‘May I come ashore and speak with you?’

‘Queen? Do dragons have kings and queens?’

‘The large blue female.’ She sounded impatient with him. ‘That one, there. Next to the girl with the broom.’

‘Ah. And how do you know she’s their queen?’

‘Not their queen, a queen. All female dragons are queens. Just as female cats are queens. Now, please, hush! I can’t hear her while you’re talking!’

The creature was making a sound like a badly-tuned wind instrument but Alise seemed enchanted by its song. When the dragon ceased its mooing, Captain Leftrin seemed equally fascinated. ‘Let’s get you down there, then,’ he said.

Alise was already in motion. She glanced back at him as she hurried toward the prow of the barge. ‘Bring your notebook, please, Sedric. Bring everything you’ll need to make a transcript of our conversation. Hurry!’

‘Very well. I’ll be right along.’ His own heartbeat jumped a bit at the prospect of finally walking among the dragons. He hurried to the makeshift stall that Leftrin had put together for him. At least it had solved one of his problems. Within the four rough walls, he had a modicum of privacy, and access to all his luggage. He opened his wardrobe trunk and then pulled open one of the drawers. He’d prepared everything as carefully as he possibly could, hoping to provide for every contingency. He took out his lap-desk and sat down on his bed to open it. The ‘bed’ was little more than a raised plank with some semi-clean bedding to soften it, but it was a place to sit, and far better than the canvas sling they had cobbled together for him to sleep in.

He checked the lap-desk’s contents hastily. There were containers for ink of various colours, some empty and some full. Some quill pens already cut and others whole. His penknife, small and sharp. A generous supply of paper in several weights, and a bound sketchbook. A small box held charcoal sticks and several sketching pencils. He pushed two concealed catches with his thumbs and the bottom of the paper box came loose. He lifted it out. There were his specimen bottles. The larger bottles and the coarse salt were concealed in a different compartment in the base of his wardrobe, but for his first foray, this was enough. Perhaps, if he were extraordinarily lucky, by the time they returned to the barge, he’d have everything he needed.

When he returned to the deck, the others were already gone. How considerate of them! He suppressed his annoyance and went to the side of the barge. A coarse rope ladder was his means of egress from the boat. It was tricky to get down with his lap-desk tucked under his arm but he wasn’t about to toss it down onto the baked mud. And of course no one offered to help him in any way. Alise was already a substantial distance down the beach, trotting along by herself. That rogue Leftrin hadn’t even seen fit to escort her, had just dropped her off on a beach littered with dragons. How could she stand that man?

He dropped the last few feet to the ground and found the impact harder than he had expected and nearly lost his grip on the precious case. He crouched down to roll up the cuffs of his trousers, scowling at how foolish he’d look, like some sort of a booted stork. Well, better that than spending the rest of the day with his cuffs weighted down with foul-smelling mud.

And it was foul. There was no mistaking the reek of excrement. It combined with the brackish smell of the river and the rank smell of the jungle to make the air a thick soup of stench. Good thing he’d not had an opportunity to eat much today or his stomach would have rebelled completely. ‘Such a lovely place you’ve chosen for a stroll, Alise,’ he muttered sarcastically to himself. ‘Off you go to frolic among the dragon dung with your river rat.’

He heard a noise like a low growl and looked around himself in alarm. No. There were no dragons anywhere near. Yet he had definitely heard the threatening snarl of a rather large creature. Even now, he had the uncomfortable sensation of being watched. Not just watched but stared at, as a cat stares at a mouse. Again he scanned the area near him, then startled as he came face to face with two large glaring eyes. His heart slammed against his ribs. An instant later, he realized his error. The eyes looked down at him from the nose of the barge. He’d never noticed them before. It was, he recalled, an old superstition to paint eyes on a ship, to help it find its way. The eyes glared at him with contempt and fury. He gave a shudder and turned away from the hideous thing.

‘Sedric! Hurry up! Please!’

He looked up to find Alise looking back at him over her shoulder. Now he saw Captain Leftrin was off to one side, conferring with a delegation of Rain Wilders about something. One had a thick scroll and seemed to be going over a list with him, point by point. The captain nodded and gave his braying laugh. The man with the scroll did not look amused.

Alise had halted just short of the dragons. Now she looked at him like a dog begging for a walk. Anxiety vied with the excitement in her stance. And no wonder. The dragon she had chosen had risen to her feet and was regarding Alise with interest. It was much bigger than it had looked from the deck of the barge. And blue, very blue. The creature’s hide sparkled iridescently in the sunlight. The eyes she had turned on Alise were large, much larger than seemed proportionate to the creature’s head. They were a coppery brown, with a slit pupil like a cat’s, but unlike a cat’s eyes the colour of the dragon’s eyes seemed to melt and swirl around the iris of her eye. It was unsettling. The creature gave a guttural call.

Alise turned her back on him and hastened toward the dragon. ‘Yes, of course. I apologize for keeping you waiting, beauteous one.’

If the dragon had been proportional and perfectly formed, she might have been beautiful, as a prize bull or a stag was beautiful. But she was not. Her tail seemed short compared to her long neck, and her legs were stumpy. The wings that she now lifted and spread seemed ridiculously small and floppy for a creature of her size, and uneven. They reminded Sedric of a parasol that the wind had blown inside out, presenting the same aspect of flimsy ribs and uneven fabric. He stood up, tucked his lap-desk under his arm and set off across the mud in pursuit of Alise.

A commotion off to one side made him halt. A small red dragon with a boy clinging to its back was thudding ponderously along the beach. ‘Open your wings!’ the lad was shouting. ‘Open your wings and flap them. You got to try, Heeby. Try really hard.’

And in response, the misshapen creature spread out wings that were not even well matched. One was larger than the other, but the dragon obediently flapped them as it ran. Its ‘flight’ ended a moment later as it charged directly into the river. The boy yelled in dismay and then shouted, with laughter in his voice, ‘You got to watch where we’re going, Heeby. But that was good for a first try. We just got to keep at it, girl.’

He was not the only one who had stopped to stare at the spectacle. Dragons and keepers alike were frozen. Some of the keepers were grinning and others were horrified. He could not read any expression on the dragon’s visages. After all, how would one tell if a cow were amused or offended? Alise, after one moment of staring in shock, turned back to her target and once more hurried off.

His longer legs soon caught him up with Alise despite her dogged trot. She seemed to be talking to the dragon. ‘You are glorious beyond words. I am so thrilled to finally be here, and to speak with you like this is beyond my wildest dreams!’

The dragon lowed back at her.

For the first time, he really noticed the young girl beside the dragon. She had rested her makeshift pine-bough broom on her shoulder. She didn’t look pleased to see them. The scowl on her face and her narrowed eyes made her look even more reptilian. For that was his first impression of her. Lizard-like, he would have said of her scaled face. He had thought her hands were caked with mud, but now he saw that her fingers ended in thick black claws. Her braided black hair looked like woven snakes, and her eyes glittered unnaturally.

‘Alise,’ he said warningly, and when she didn’t respond, he raised his voice more commandingly. ‘Alise, stop a moment! Wait for me.’

‘Well, hurry then!’

She paused, but he sensed that she would not wait long. In two strides he caught up with her completely. In the guise of taking her arm, he caught hold of her. ‘Be careful!’ he cautioned her in a low voice, pitching his words to carry through the dragon’s vocalizing. ‘You know nothing of the dragon. And the girl looks distinctly unfriendly. Either one or both of them may be dangerous.’

‘Sedric, let go! Can’t you hear her? She says she wishes to speak to me. I think the best way to insult her and anger her is to ignore such a request. And speaking to the dragons is exactly why I came here. And it’s why you are here, too! So follow me and please, have your pen ready to record our conversation.’

She tried to pull free of him. He kept his grip and leaned down to peer into her face. ‘Alise, are you serious?’

‘Of course I am! Why do you think I came all this way?’

‘But … the dragon is not speaking. Unless mooing like a cow or barking like a dog conveys some meaning to you. What am I to record?’

She looked at him in confusion that became dismay and then, inexplicably, sympathy. ‘Oh, Sedric, you cannot understand her at all? Not one word?’

‘If she has spoken a word, I haven’t understood it. All I’ve heard is, well, dragon noises.’

Almost as if in response to his comment, the dragon released a rumble of sound. She swivelled her head to face the dragon. ‘Please, I beg you, let me have a moment with my friend! He cannot seem to hear you.’

When Alise met Sedric’s gaze again she shook her head in woe. ‘I’d heard that there were some who could not understand clearly what Tintaglia said, and a few who could not even perceive she was speaking at all. But I never thought you would be so afflicted. What are we to do now, Sedric? How will you record our conversations?’

‘Conversations?’ At first he’d been annoyed at her childish pretence of talking to the dragon. It was the same annoyance he always felt when people greeted dogs as ‘old man’ and asked ‘how my fine old fellow has been’. Women who talked to their cats made him shudder. Alise, as a rule, did neither, and he’d thought her calls to the dragon had been some new and unwelcome Rain Wilds affectation. But now, to insist that the dragon was speaking to her and then to offer him her pity – it was too much. ‘I’ll record them just as I would log your conversations with a cow. Or a tree. Alise, this is ridiculous. I’ll accept, because I must, that the dragon Tintaglia had the ability to make herself understood. But this creature? Look at it!’

The dragon writhed its lips and made a flat, hissing noise. Alise went scarlet. The young Rain Wilder beside the dragon spoke to him. ‘She says to tell you that although you may not understand her, she understands every word you say. And that the problem is not in her speaking, nor even in your ears, but in your mind. There have always been humans who cannot hear dragons. And usually they are the most arrogant and ignorant ones.’

It was too much. ‘Keep a civil tongue in your head when you address your elders, girl. Or is that no longer taught here in the Rain Wilds?’

The dragon gave a sudden huff. The force of her exhaled breath blasted him with warmth and the stink of the semi-rotted meat she had just eaten. He turned aside from her with an exclamation of disgust.

Alise gave a gasp of horror and pleaded, ‘He does not understand! He meant no insult! Please, he meant no insult!’ An instant later, Alise had seized him by the arm. ‘Sedric, are you all right?’ she demanded of him.

‘That creature belched right in my face!’

Alise gave a strangled laugh. She seemed to be trembling with relief. ‘A belch? Was that what you thought it? If so, we are fortunate that was all. If her poison glands were mature, you’d be melting right now. Don’t you know anything of dragons? Don’t you recall what became of the Chalcedean raiders who attacked Bingtown? All Tintaglia had to do was breathe on them. Whatever it was she spat, it ate right through armour. And right through skin and bone as well.’ She paused, and then added, ‘You have insulted her without meaning to. I think you should go back to the ship. Right now. Give me time to explain your misunderstanding of her.’

The Rain Wilds girl spoke again. She had a husky voice, a surprisingly rich contralto. Her silver gaze was both unsettling and compelling. ‘Skymaw agrees with the Bingtown woman. Whether you’re my elder or not, she says you should leave the dragon grounds. Now.’

Sedric felt even more affronted. ‘I don’t think that you have the right to tell me what to do at all,’ he told the girl.

But Alise spoke over his words. ‘Skymaw? That’s her name?’

‘It’s what I call her,’ the girl amended. She seemed embarrassed to have to admit it. ‘She told me that a dragon’s true name is a thing to be earned, not given.’

‘I understand completely,’ Alise replied. ‘The true name of a dragon is a very special thing to know. No dragon tells her true name lightly.’ She treated the dragon’s keeper as if she were a charming child who had interrupted an important adult conversation. The ‘child’ did not enjoy that, Sedric noted.

Alise turned back to the hulking reptile. The creature had ventured so close that it now towered over them. Her eyes were like burnished copper, glittering in the sunlight. Her gaze was fixed steadily on him. Alise spoke to the creature. ‘Great and gracious one, your true name is an honour that I hope one day to win. But in the meantime, I am pleased to give you mine. I am Alise Kincarron Finbok.’ And she actually curtsied to the creature, bobbing down almost into the mud.

‘I have come all the way from Bingtown to see you, and to hear you speak. I hope that we shall have long conversations, and that I shall be able to learn a great deal about you and the wisdom of your kind. Long has it been since humanity was favoured with the company of dragons. What little we knew of your kind has, I fear, been forgotten. I would like to remedy that lack.’ She gestured toward Sedric. ‘I brought him with me, to be our scribe and record any wisdom you wished to share with me. I am sorry that he cannot hear you, for I am certain that if he could, he would quickly perceive both your intelligence and your wisdom.’

The dragon rumbled again. The young keeper looked at Sedric and said, ‘Skymaw says that even if you could understand her words, she thinks it likely you would be unable to comprehend either her intelligence or wisdom, for plainly you lack both.’

Her ‘translation’ was obviously intended to insult. The girl’s eyes, silvery-grey, darted toward Alise when she spoke. If Alise was aware of her animosity, she ignored it. Instead Alise turned to him and said quietly but firmly, ‘I’ll see you when I return to the ship, Sedric. If you don’t mind, would you leave your lap-desk with me? I may try to write down some of what we discuss.’

‘Of course,’ he said, and managed to keep the bitterness and the resentment from his voice. Long ago, he thought to himself, he’d had to learn to speak civilly even after Hest had publicly flayed him with words. It was not so hard. All he had to do was discard every bit of his pride. He’d never thought that he would have to employ that talent with Alise. He thrust the lap-desk at her, and as she took it was almost pleased to see her surprise at how heavy it was. Let her deal with carrying it about, he thought vengefully to himself. Let her see the sort of work he’d been willing to do for her. Perhaps she might appreciate him a bit more. He turned away from her.

Then, with a sudden lurch of heart, he realized there were things inside that lap-desk that he emphatically did not wish to share with Alise. He turned hastily back to her. ‘The entire secretarial desk will be too heavy for you to use easily. Perhaps I could just leave you some blank paper, and a pen and ink?’

She looked startled at this sudden kindness and he suddenly knew that she knew he’d intended to be rude when he’d burdened her with the whole desk. She looked pathetically grateful as he took it from her and opened it. The raised lid kept her from peering inside, but she didn’t seem to have any curiosity about it. As he rummaged inside it for the required items, she said quietly, ‘Thank you for your understanding, Sedric. I know this must be hard for you, to come so far on such a great adventure, and then to find that fortune has excluded you from the best part of it. I want you to know that I think no less of you; such a lack could afflict anyone.’

‘It’s fine, Alise,’ he said, and tried not to sound brusque. She thought his feelings were hurt because he couldn’t communicate with the animal. And she felt sorry for him. The thought almost made him smile and his heart softened toward her. How many years had he felt sorry for her? It was odd to be on the receiving end of her pity. Odd, and strangely touching that she’d care if his feelings were hurt.

‘I’ve plenty of work to do back on the boat. I trust you’ll be back for the evening meal?’

‘Oh, likely much before then. I shan’t stand here in the dark and quiz her, I assure you. Today I’ll be happy if we just get to know each other well enough to be comfortable. Thank you. I’ll try not to waste your ink.’

‘You’re welcome. Really you are. I’ll see you later.’

Thymara watched the exchange between the well-dressed man and the Bingtown woman and wondered. They seemed very familiar with each other; she wondered if they were married. She was reminded of her parents, and how they had always seemed connected and yet distant to each other. These two seemed to get along about as well as her parents did.

She already disliked both of them. The man because he had no respect for Skymaw and was too stupid to understand her, and the woman, because she had seen the dragon and now she coveted her. And she would probably win the dragon, for she seemed to know how to charm her. Couldn’t Skymaw see that the Bingtown woman was just trying to flatter her with her flowery phrases and overdone courtesy? She would have thought that the dragon would be angered by such a blatant attempt to win favour with her. Instead, Skymaw seemed delighted with the extravagant compliments the woman showered on her. She fawned on her, openly begging for more.

And in turn, the woman seemed completely infatuated with the dragon. From the first moment they had seen one another, Thymara had almost felt the mutual draw between them. It irritated her.

No. It was more than irritation. It made her seethe with jealousy, she admitted, because it excluded her. She was supposed to be Skymaw’s keeper, not this ridiculous city woman. This Alise would not be able to feed the dragon or tend her. Would this woman with her soft body and pale skin walk beside the dragon as they wended their way upriver through the shallows and the encroaching forest? Would she kill to feed the dragon, would she perform the tedious grooming that Skymaw so obviously needed? She thought not! Thymara had spent most of the day scrubbing at Skymaw’s hide until every scale gleamed. She’d dug caked mud out of her claws and claw-sheaths, picked a legion of nasty little blood-sucking beetles from the edges of the dragon’s eyes and nostrils, and even cleared an area of reeking fresh dragon dung so that Skymaw could stretch out for her grooming without becoming soiled again.

But the moment this Bingtown woman threw her a compliment or two, the dragon focused entirely on her as if Thymara had never existed. Would the woman have thought her so ‘gleamingly beautiful’ if she’d seen the dragon five hours ago? Not likely. The dragon was using all Thymara’s hard work to attract a better keeper for herself. She’d soon find she’d make a poor choice.

Just like Tats.

The thought ambushed her and she felt the sudden sting of tears behind her eyes. She pushed all thoughts of Tats and Jerd aside. That night when Tats had left the fireside and Jerd had followed, she’d thought nothing of it. Tats, she thought, had needed time to be alone. But then, when they came back to the fire together, it was obvious to Thymara that he had been anything but alone. He seemed completely recovered from his exchange of comments with Greft. Jerd had been laughing at something he said. At the fire’s edge, they’d sat down side by side. She’d overheard Jerd quizzing him about his life, asking the sort of personal questions that Thymara had always avoided for fear of Tats thinking she was too nosy. Jerd had asked them, smiling and tipping her head to look up into his face, and Tats had replied in his deep soft voice. She’d sat by the fire and Rapskal supplied an unwelcome distraction as he pelted her with his speculations about the journey and what they would have for breakfast tomorrow and if it was possible to kill a gallator with a sling. Greft had glared at her, Tats and Rapskal and then had gone stalking off into the forest on his own. Nortel and Boxter had both seemed out of sorts as well, exchanging small barbed comments. Harrikin had suddenly seemed sullen and sulky. None of it made sense to her; she only knew that her earlier sensation of goodwill and friendliness had been more fleeting than the smoke from their campfire.

And that night, Tats had spread out his bedding and gone to sleep near Jerd, without even speaking to Thymara to say good night. She’d thought they were friends, good friends. She’d even been stupid enough to think that he’d only signed up as a dragon keeper because he knew that she’d be going, too. Worse, Rapskal had tossed his blankets right down beside hers after she had made her bed for the evening. She couldn’t very well get up and move away from him, much as she wished to. He’d slept next to her every night since they left Trehaug. He talked and laughed even in his sleep, and her dreams, when she did find them that night, were uneasy ones of her father looking for her in a mist.

In vain, she tried to recall her mind to the present and focus on the conversation next to her. The Bingtown woman was speaking to Skymaw. ‘Do you recall, lovely one, your immediate ancestor’s experience, your glorious mother’s life? Do you know what happened to the world to cause dragons to become nearly extinct and leave humans to mourn in loneliness for so long?’ She stood awaiting an answer, her pen poised over her paper. It was sickening.

Worse, Skymaw was wallowing in the praise and answering the woman in dragon riddles while telling her nothing at all. ‘My “mother”? Were she here, you would not insult her so lightly! A dragon is never a mother as you know it, little milk-making creature. We never fuss about squealing babies or waste our days in tending to the wants of helpless young. We are never as helpless and stupid as humans are when they are first born, knowing nothing of what or who they are. It is irony, is it not, that you live so short a time, and waste so much of it being stupid? While we live for dozens of your lives, aware every instant of what we are and who our ancestors were. You can see that it is hopeless for a human to try to understand dragonkind at all.’

Thymara turned away abruptly from the dragon and the Bingtown woman. ‘I’d best go see if I can kill some food for you,’ she announced, not caring that she broke into the midst of their conversation. It was disgusting anyway. The woman kept asking Skymaw stupid questions, phrased in grovelling, honeyed compliments. And the dragon kept evading the questions, refusing her any real answers. Was that just what any dragon would do? Or was Skymaw trying to conceal her own ignorance?

Now there was an idea that was almost more disturbing than the thought that Tats suddenly found Jerd more interesting than she was. And nearly as upsetting that neither the dragon nor the Bingtown woman seemed to take any notice of her leaving.

She strode across the mud-baked shore toward their small boats. She’d left her belongings bundled up with her pack in one of the boats. She cast a casual glance at the big black scow at the edge of the shore. The Tarman. It was a strange craft, far more blunt and square than any other boat she’d ever seen. It had eyes painted on its prow; she’d heard that was an old custom, older than the Rain Wilds settlements. It was supposed to encourage the boat to look out for itself and avoid dangers in the river. She liked the boat’s eyes. They looked old and wise, like the eyes of a kindly old man over his sympathetic smile. She hoped they would actually help guide the ship as they tried to find a way up the Rain Wild River. They were going to need all the help they could get to carry out their mission.

She found her fishing spear and decided to try her luck, even though it looked as if the other keepers were already patrolling the shallow bank for any unwary fish. Rapskal had had a small success. He’d speared a fish the size of his hand. He did a victory dance with the flopping creature still stuck on the end of his spear, and then turned to his little red dragon. She had been toddling along behind Rapskal like a child’s pull toy. ‘Open up, Heeby!’ Rapskal demanded, and the dragon obediently gaped at him. Rapskal tugged the fish off the spear and tossed it into the dragon’s maw. The creature just stood there. ‘Well, eat it! There’s food in your mouth, shut your mouth and eat it!’ Rapskal advised her. After a moment the dragon complied. Thymara wondered if the creature were too stupid even to eat food put in its mouth, or if the fish had been so small the dragon hadn’t noticed it.

She shook her head at them. She doubted that any large river fish would linger there in the sluggish warm water under the open sky. She turned her back on the dragons and her friends and headed toward the far edge of the clearing, where the trees tangled their worn roots right out into the river. Coarse sword-grass grew there, and grey reeds and spearman-grass. The rising and falling of the water level had left fallen branches and dead leaves tangled and dangling from the clawing tree roots that reached out into the river. If she were a fish, that would be where she would take shelter from the sunlight and predators. She’d try her luck there.

Clambering out on the twisting roots was both like and unlike her travels through the canopy. Up there, a fall could mean death, but the layers of branches also offered a hundred chances to grip a limb or liana and regain her life. Down here, there were gaps in the matted tangle of roots under her feet. Below, the river flowed, grey and stinging, at best threatening to give her a rash, at worst eating through skin and flesh down to the bone. There was also the chance of crashing through completely into water over her head, and worse, coming back up under the tangled roots. The trees were still under her feet, as they had always been, but the dangers were different. Somehow that made it hard to remember that she was sure-footed and made for the Rain Wilds.

The third time her booted foot slipped on the roots, she stopped and thought. Then she sat down and carefully unlaced both boots. She knotted the laces together and slung them around her neck and went on, digging the claws of her toes into the bark. She found a likely place. The foliage overhead cast a dappling shade over her. A thick twist of root gave sheltering debris a place to cling even as it provided her an opening over the river. The grass and fallen branches filtered the silt-laden river water here, so it was almost translucent. She sat down where her shadow would not fall on the water, poised her fish spear and waited.

It took time for her eyes to learn to read the water. She could not see fish, but after a time she could see shadows, and then swirls in the sediment that showed a fish had passed. Her shoulder began to ache from holding her spear at the ready; the spear itself seemed to weigh as much as a tree trunk. She pushed the ache out of her mind and focused her whole being on reading the swirls in the sediment. That would be the tail, so the head would be there, no, too late, it’s back under the root. Here it comes, here it comes, here it – no, back under the root. There he is, he’s a big one, wait, wait, and—

She jabbed down with the spear rather than throwing it. She felt it hit the fish and pushed hard and strong to pin it to the river bed. But the water was deeper than she had thought and suddenly she had to catch herself on the root to keep from tumbling in while the fish, a very large one, wriggled and jerked on the end of her spear, trying to free itself. She fought to keep her balance while keeping the fish on the spear.

Someone grabbed her from behind.

‘Let go!’ she roared and pushed the butt of the spear back hard, thudding it solidly into whoever had seized her. She heard a whoosh of exhaled breath and then a faint curse. She didn’t turn, for the thud had nearly dislodged her fish. She flipped up the spear end, bracing the butt against her hip and was astounded at the size of the fish she levered out of the river. Thrashing wildly, the fish actually drove the spear deeper and then through its own body. Her prey was nearly half the length of her body and it came sliding down the spear shaft toward her.

‘Don’t lose him. Keep hold of your spear!’ Tats shouted from behind her.

‘I’ve got him,’ she snarled, irritated that he would think she needed his help. Despite her words, he reached past her shoulder and seized the other end of the spear. Between them, they held it horizontally while the fish struggled wildly. Then Tats produced a knife in his free hand and whacked the fish soundly on the head with the back of the blade. Abruptly it was still. She breathed a sigh of relief. It felt as if her shoulder had nearly been jolted from its socket.

Still gripping her end of the spear, she turned to thank him, and was astonished to find they were not alone. The Bingtown woman’s friend was sitting on a hummock of root, his hands clasped over his mid-section. His face was red save for where his mouth was pinched tight and white. He gazed at her with narrowed eyes and then spoke in a tight voice. ‘I was trying to help you. I thought you were going to fall in.’

‘What are you doing here?’ she demanded.

‘I saw him going into the forest where you had gone and thought he was following you. So I came to see what he was up to.’ Tats was the one who answered her question.

‘I’m able to take care of myself,’ she pointed out to him.

Tats refused to take offence. ‘I know that. I didn’t interfere when you thumped him. I only helped you with the fish because I didn’t want to see it get away.’

She made an impatient noise and focused on the stranger. ‘Why did you follow me?’ Tats gripped the spear to either side of the fish, grinning. She let him take the weight of it but watched closely as he set her catch down on the matted roots.

‘You knocked the wind out of me,’ the stranger complained, and then managed to take a fuller, deeper breath. He uncurled slightly and some of the redness went out of his face. ‘I only followed you because I wanted to talk to you. I’d seen you with the dragon, the one that Alise is interested in. I wanted to ask you a few things.’

‘Such as?’ A blush betrayed her. He probably thought she was some half-savage Rain Wilds primitive. She was starting to think she had misjudged him but she wasn’t going to apologize just yet. Actually, she was beginning to hope she had misjudged him. Earlier she had noticed how polished he was. She had never seen a man dressed so well as this one was. Now that his colour was settling, she realized he was extremely handsome. Earlier, when he had been talking with the Bingtown woman, she had thought him stuffy and horribly ignorant of dragons, not to mention arrogant and rude when he spoke to her. His beauty had just seemed a part of the insult, the power that gave him the authority to look down on her. But he’d followed her and actually tried to help her. For which she’d thudded a spear butt into his belly.

But now he made up for many of his sins when he gave her a rueful smile and said, ‘Look, we got off to a bad start. And I don’t suppose I made things better when I startled you. I was insulting when I first spoke to you, but you must admit, you weren’t exactly courteous to me. And you are now one up on me for nearly impaling me on the dull end of a fishing spear.’ He paused, took a deep breath and his colour almost became normal. ‘Can we begin again, please?’

Before she could reply, he stood, bowed at the waist to her and said, ‘How do you do? My name is Sedric Meldar. I’m from Bingtown and ordinarily my daily work is to be a secretary to Trader Finbok of Bingtown. But for this month, I am accompanying Trader Finbok’s wife Alise as her chronicler and protector as she seeks to amass new and exciting knowledge about dragons and Elderlings.’

Thymara found herself smiling before his speech was halfway out. He spoke so formally yet in a way that let her know he was mocking the formality and the grandness of his work. He was dressed like a prince, with not a hair out of place, and yet his smile and easy ways invited her to feel comfortable with him. As if they were equals, she realized.

‘What’s a chronicler?’ Tats demanded abruptly.

‘I write down what she does. Where she goes, the gist of her conversations, and sometimes, when she is doing research, I write down in detail what she learns. Later, she’ll be able to look back over what I’ve written to be sure she is remembering every detail correctly. I’m also a passable artist, and intended to do sketches of the dragons, detailed sketches of their eyes, claws, teeth, and well, every part of them. Only today I discovered that I’m not going to be much use to her for the interviewing part of her work. I seem to have offended the dragon, which means that I can’t be with Alise while she is studying her. And even if I could be, I couldn’t understand any of the animal’s answers to Alise’s questions.’

‘Skymaw,’ Thymara supplied helpfully. ‘The dragon’s name is Skymaw.’

‘She told you her name?’ Tats was astounded.

Thymara was irritated at the interruption. ‘Skymaw is what I call her,’ she amended, giving him a glare. ‘Everyone knows that dragons don’t tell their real names immediately.’

‘Yes, that’s what my dragon told me, too. Only she didn’t ask me to give her a name to use.’ He smiled foolishly. ‘She’s such a beauty, Thymara. Green as emeralds, green as sunlight through leaves. Her eyes are like, well, I don’t have words. She’s a bad-tempered little thing, though. I accidentally stepped on her toe and she threatened to kill and eat me!’

‘Wait, please.’ It was the stranger’s turn to interrupt them. ‘Please. Both of you. You are saying that you talk to the dragons? Just as we are talking right now.’

Only Sedric didn’t feel like a stranger to her any more. She smiled at him. ‘Of course we do.

‘They move their mouths and the words come out and you hear them? Just as we are talking together now? Then why do I hear rumbles and moos and hisses, and you hear words?’

‘Well—’ She hesitated, realizing she hadn’t thought about how she ‘heard’ the dragons.

‘No, of course not.’ Tats barged in again. ‘Their mouths are all wrong for shaping words like we do. They make sounds, and somehow I understand what they are saying. Even though they aren’t speaking a human language.’

‘Did it take you long to learn their language? Did you study it before you came here?’ Sedric asked.

‘No.’ Tats shook his head decisively. ‘When I first got here, I picked out my dragon and walked up to her, and I could understand her. Mine is the green female. She’s not as big as some of the others, but I think she’s prettier. Also, she’s fast and other than her wings, I think she’s pretty much perfectly formed. She’s a bit feisty; she says the others say she’s mean and avoid her. She says it’s because she’s fast enough to get to the food first almost every time. They’re jealous.’

‘Or perhaps they just think she’s greedy,’ Thymara suggested. Time to take control of this conversation. After all, Sedric hadn’t followed Tats into the woods to speak to him, even if he now seemed to be hanging on every word the boy spoke. ‘I’ve been able to understand the dragons since they hatched,’ she told the Bingtown man. ‘I was here that day. And even when they weren’t looking at me directly, I could feel what they were thinking, even as they were coming out of their logs. And communicate with them.’ She smiled. ‘One of the hatchlings went after my dad. I had to insist that he wasn’t food.’

‘A dragon wanted to eat your father?’ Sedric seemed horrified.

‘They had just come out of their cases. He was confused.’ She cast her mind back, remembering. ‘They were so hungry when they came out. And they weren’t as strong as they should have been or as well formed. I think the sea serpents were too old and not as fat as they should have been, and they didn’t stay encased long enough. And that’s why these dragons aren’t healthy and can’t fly.’

‘Can’t fly yet,’ Tats amended. He grinned. ‘You saw Rapskal. He’s determined that his dragon is going to fly. He’s crazy, of course. But after I watched them, well, I was looking at my green’s wings. They’re well shaped, but just small and not very strong. She told me that dragons keep growing for as long as they live. All parts of them grow, necks, legs, tails and yes, wings. I’m thinking that if I feed her right and she keeps trying to use them, maybe her wings will grow and she will be able to fly.’

Thymara regarded him in astonishment. She had just accepted the dragons as they were; it had not occurred to her that perhaps they might become full dragons as they grew. Now she reconsidered Skymaw’s wings. They had seemed floppy when she had cleaned them and Skymaw had not been very helpful about unfolding them for grooming. She didn’t think Skymaw could move them much. A surge of envy raced through her; was it possible that Tats’ green dragon might eventually gain flight while Skymaw remained earthbound?

‘But you can understand what they say, word for word?’ Sedric seemed intent on dragging them back to his own concern about the dragons. When Thymara nodded, he asked, ‘So when you said those things to me, you weren’t making them up? You were actually translating what the dragon was trying to say to me?’

She suddenly felt a bit abashed by how she had spoken to him. ‘I was repeating exactly what Skymaw was saying,’ she excused herself, and felt only slightly guilty for blaming her rudeness on the dragon.

‘So, then. You could translate for me? If I wanted to talk to her, apologize—’

‘No need for that. I mean, you can speak directly to her. She understands exactly what you say.’

‘Yes, she did, and that is exactly how I was getting into trouble with her. But if Alise asks your dragon a question and your dragon answers, you could translate the answer for me? Quietly, off to one side, so we don’t disturb their conversation.’

‘Of course. But so could Alise – I mean, the lady. So could any of the keepers.’

‘But that would slow down Alise’s work. I was thinking that if someone would interpret for me, as the dragon talks, I could get it all down. I’m a very fast writer. And I suppose any keeper could do it,’ and here he glanced at Tats. ‘But seeing as how she is your dragon, I think you would be the logical choice.’

She liked how he kept referring to Skymaw as her dragon. ‘I suppose I could.’

‘Well then – would you?’

‘Would I what? Just stand there while they’re talking, only tell you what the dragon is saying?’

‘Exactly.’ He hesitated, and then offered, ‘I could pay you, if you wish. For your time.’

It was tempting, but her father had raised her to be honest. ‘I’ve already been paid for my time, and it belongs to the dragon now. I can’t sell my time twice any more than I could sell a plum twice. So I couldn’t take your money. And I’d have to ask Skymaw if she would allow you to be near her, and if she would mind if I told you what she was saying.’

‘Well.’ He seemed taken aback at the thought that she couldn’t accept his money. ‘Would you ask her, then? I’d be indebted to you.’

She cocked her head at him. ‘Actually, I think it would be Alise Finbok who would be indebted to me. After all, she’s bought your time, for you to do this work for her. And if I make it so you can do it, well—’ Thymara smiled to herself. ‘Yes, I think actually she’d be the one indebted to me.’ She rather liked the idea of that.

‘So, then, you’ll ask the dragon if I can be around her? And if you can interpret for me what she says?’

Thymara bent down and grasped her fishing spear to either side of her prey. She grunted slightly as she lifted the heavy fish. She nodded toward it as she answered him. ‘Let’s ask her right now. I think I have something here that might put her in the mood to say yes.’