‘You saying we should give this up?’ Leftrin scowled down at her.
‘No, sir. I’m saying, it’s going to take hands. You have to let me try. I’m the smallest and lightest of the crew. And you need someone with some muscle in her arm for the climbing part. It has to be me. Sir. ’
Tats lowered his eyes and beside him, Thymara was silent. She knew they both agreed with the deckhand. Skelly was the one for the job. At the same time, she suppressed a shudder. She could not imagine trusting her life to a length of rope, let alone descending so deep into a cold, lightless hole in the ground. Just the thought of it made her queasy. The job might need hands, but they wouldn’t be hers.
‘I’m not going to trust your life to a piece of line that long. ’ Captain Leftrin was blunt. ‘Your rigging skills won’t be much use to you if your hands are numb from cold. If the rope breaks, you die from touching the Silver. We heard that from Mercor himself. So. That’s not going to happen. ’
‘Then you’re saying we’re giving up?’ She was so astounded that she forgot the ‘sir’.
‘Not giving up. Just not doing it your way. We’ve got a lot of salvaged chain. In pieces. I don’t know what broke it into lengths, but whatever did it is a lot stronger than a man with a hammer. I had Big Eider working on some last night, trying to see if he could open some links and hammer it back together. No luck so far. But once we get it mended, if we can make it long enough, then I might trust it to take someone down that hole. Not you, but someone. ’
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‘Sir, I—’
Her offended protest was cut short. Distant trumpets were sounding. Everyone froze, and then the meaning dawned on them.
‘The dragons are coming back!’ Lecter shouted. ‘Sestican! Sestican!’
‘Fente will want a hot soak and a grooming. ’ Tats sounded almost apologetic.
‘As will Sintara. ’ Thymara knew what it meant. Until the dragons were bathed and groomed, their lives would not be their own. And as Sintara did not enjoy the company of any of the other queens, chances were that she would not see Tats for that time. She felt a pang that surprised her. Had she so quickly become accustomed to spending her days with him? It had been simpler without Rapskal and her feelings for him complicating her life. And with that thought came another on its heels. She would have to deal once again with Rapskal and what he was becoming. A shiver of dread went through her. Each time she saw him, he was stranger. And more of a stranger.
‘Are you coming?’
The others, keepers and ship’s crew, had already begun hurrying back toward the Square of the Dragons. Tats had paused to wait for her. ‘I’m coming,’ she replied, and hurried to catch hands with him before they ran together.
By twos and threes, the dragons arrived. The boasting and trumpeting and the cries for attention from the keepers made it nearly impossible to get a coherent account of what had happened. Fente was disgusted that she had had to land in the river and walk about on the mud. She had made several kills on the journey home, all in the muddy margins of the river, and insisted that she was filthy even though, to Tats’s eyes, she was her green gleaming self.
Her account of how the dragons had flown into battle, cowing the evil humans into submission by virtue of their glittering beauty, seemed far-fetched to him. ‘So you captured them all without shedding a drop of blood?’ he asked as he inspected her claws after her long soak in the hot water.
She stretched her toes languorously. He found a bit of grit caught between two of them and diligently brushed it away.
Some died. One demanded to be eaten, so Spit ate him. Some jumped in the river and drowned. Some ran off in the forest, and so we left them. Then they had a fight amongst themselves on the way here, and some of them were injured. Stupid humans.
‘I see,’ Tats said quietly. ‘And Tintaglia, who you went to rescue?’
‘Dead by now. We were too late. All we could do was avenge her. Kalo remained behind with her, to eat her memories when she was gone. ’
Tats looked away from her. Tears stung his eyes. So the first-born child of the King and Queen of the Elderlings must perish as well. ‘That will be hard for Malta to hear. ’
‘She is deaf now?’ Fente asked, her curiosity idle. Tats shook his head and gave it up. From the way she dismissed the events, he knew there was no use in asking for details. She would be far more interested in telling him what she killed and exactly how it tasted than in explaining to him how a battle had been won and two ships captured.
Or so they claimed. Not all of the dragons had returned yet. Of the ships and Rapskal and Heeby there was no sign, nor of Kalo, Mercor and Baliper. They are coming, very slowly, Fente had explained to him. And then she demanded that he clean very carefully around her eyes, for she feared she had picked up water ticks from hunting in the river.
He had just finished that task when he heard more trumpeting from the river. The others have returned, she told him. He followed Fente out to the square where she launched into the air without a word of farewell. She was off to the hunt. She had no interest in ships or homecomings, not while her stomach was empty. He watched her depart and then followed the other keepers down toward the city docks.
That area had changed substantially since Tarman’s return. Leftrin and his crew had made a dozen small changes to Carson’s handiwork and had expanded it in other ways. Tarman was now tied securely within a slip, his lines run to stout shore anchors as well as to an anchor set in the river to keep him from being driven against the shore. It looked to Tats as if the ship could not possibly be torn free, but Leftrin insisted that two hands be aboard him at all times, and none of the crew seemed to think that odd.
When the dragons had arrived and told them that they could expect two more vessels to dock soon, the first reaction had been disbelief. It had been followed by activity that reminded Tats of a stirred-up wasps’ nest as keepers and crew frantically tried to make space for two more boats at their ramshackle dock while dealing with the demands of the dragons.
Mercor had been the first of the dragons to land. He came in gracefully, landing against the river’s current and sending a plume of water rooster-tailing behind him. He had calculated his speed precisely and emerged quickly from the water, to Sylve’s shouts of admiration.
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But his first words had not been a greeting but a query. ‘Have you found Silver yet? Is the well cleared?’ As the other dragons landed and made their way to shore, he listened gravely as he was told that only a small quantity of the precious stuff had been pulled up from the well, and that efforts to reach the bottom of the well had been suspended by news of the dragons returning with two ships.
‘And the Silver you did find?’ he asked avidly.
The small quantity of the precious stuff had been carefully poured into an Elderling flask made of heavy glass and placed in the centre of the table where the keepers dined. There it sat and shimmered, casting an unearthly glow of its own into the room. Tats had been certain that Malta and Reyn would try to apply it directly to the child, but they had not. Perhaps Kase’s small mishap had persuaded them of its danger. In the transfer from the large bucket to the much smaller flask, a single drop of Silver had fallen onto the back of his forearm. He had exclaimed in fear, and then as the others drew near, he bent his head over his arm and stared at the Silver as it shimmered.
‘Wipe it off!’ Tats had exclaimed, tossing him a rag.
He had dabbed at it, to no effect. ‘It doesn’t hurt,’ he had told them. ‘But it feels very wrong, all the same. ’ They had all watched in silent fear as the Silver spread on his skin, outlining the scales on his arm and then almost disappearing.
‘Nothing happened,’ Sylve said hopefully.
Kase had shaken his head. ‘Something’s happening there. It doesn’t hurt, but something is happening. ’ He’d swallowed uneasily and then added, ‘I
hope Dortean comes back soon. He’ll know what to do about this. ’
In the day since then, he had shed all his scaling where the Silver touched him, and the skin beneath it looked raw and angry. And remained a dull, silvery grey.
Mercor had listened attentively to their tale. ‘Yes. Dortean will be able to deal with that much Silver, if Kase goes to his dragon promptly. ’ The golden dragon’s eyes had whirled slowly. ‘And that was all the Silver you were able to bring up?’ he had asked again.
‘I’m sorry,’ Sylve had told him, and her dragon had wheeled away from her in silent disappointment.
The other dragons soon knew the full tale, and had unhappily conceded that until all the dragons had returned, the vial of Silver would remain untouched. They had accepted the news that the well was all but dry and that the Elderlings would have to work on a device that would lower one of them down to harvest what little Silver there might be. They had not seemed very excited at the news and he guessed the reason. The well was already incredibly deep. They surmised, as he did, that the Silver was all gone.
‘Tats!’ Thymara called, and he glanced back to see her running toward him. The back of her Elderling tunic stirred as her wings struggled to open. She had confided to him that sometimes that happened when she hurried, as if some part of her thought she should take flight. Now as she came toward him, smiling, the wind lifting her hair, he saw how much the wings were changing her. She carried them, a weight on her back, and even folded, their angles projected up higher than her ears. Lovely as they were, he suddenly wished she did not have them, for they forced him to recognize that all of them were changed as much as she was, just as far from the humans they had once been. All of them had changed, and all were just as much at risk from the lack of Silver as the dragons were. He thought of Greft, dying of his changes on the journey to Kelsingra. Did such an end await all of them?
‘You look so solemn,’ Thymara said as she caught up with him.
‘I’m a bit worried about Rapskal,’ he said, and it was not a lie even if it was not the immediate truth.
They crested the last hill and looked down at the docks. Sintara and Baliper were wheeling overhead and Spit had flown up to join them. Rapskal circled them on his scarlet dragon. His shouted victory song reached them as a thin whisper on the wind.
Oars powered the two ships that were coming in to dock. They were long and lean, low to the water. Their masts were stripped of sail and folded down to the deck. The oars rose and fell in an uncertain rhythm that spoke either of weariness or clumsy oarsmen. ‘Catch a line!’ Big Eider’s cry rang out as he threw a coiled line to them, and the men who scrambled to catch it were certainly not sailors. They caught it, and then stood staring at it until one of the oarsmen leapt up to take it from their hands.
The rest of the docking proceeded with similar awkwardness. Some of the men on the ships were doing nothing to help, only standing and shouting that they were innocent men, honest Traders from Bingtown, and that they had done nothing to hurt a dragon or to deserve to have their ship stolen from them. Tats and Thymara halted where they stood to watch the spectacle. As the second ship ran into the first, tangling oars and breaking several, the shouts and curses rose in a storm. Other lines were thrown, and a man stood on the raised deck of one of the ships screaming orders that either his crew ignored or did not know how to obey. On the other, a reasonably competent crew ran about frantically trying to protect their vessel.
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‘This is bad,’ Tats said in a low voice. ‘Fente told me the dragons conquered evil warriors. They don’t look like warriors. They look like merchants. ’
‘Trouble will come of this,’ Thymara agreed.
Slowly they moved down the hill to see what the river had brought them.
‘Like a courting bird,’ Big Eider said, and Leftrin growled in agreement. It had driven him nearly mad to see ships handled so. They might not be alive, but they were gracious, well-built craft and they did not deserve to be run into pilings nor each other in the course of a simple docking. As they were finally being secured to the dock that he did not completely trust for one ship, let alone three, Heeby landed Rapskal nearby. The young Elderling slid down from the scarlet dragon’s shoulder, patted her, and suggested she ‘Go take a long soak, my lovely, and I’ll be along to scrub you down soon. ’ As his darling lumbered off, Rapskal promenaded down to the tethered ships. He stood, looking at his prizes and nodding to himself, prompting Big Eider’s remark.
As his fellow keepers began to close in around him, he lifted up his hands and his voice. ‘Hostages! Disembark and show yourselves. ’
‘Hostages?’ Skelly asked in disbelief.
‘That’s what he said,’ Leftrin growled at her, and then went forward to be certain the captured ships were not left completely unmanned. Hennesey followed him, and with a shrug and a jerk of her head, Skelly motioned to Big Eider. They trailed their captain while Swarge looked on from Tarman’s deck, smoking a pipe and shaking his head in disapproval.
Leftrin glanced back once at his own vessel. Alise, still looking pale, had come out of their stateroom and onto the deck. She was freshly attired in a long, pale-green tunic over leggings and boots of darker green. Her long red hair, freshly plaited, hung in loops to her shoulder and was secured with rows of bright pins. He knew that style. He had seen it portrayed in mosaics in the city. It worried him that she had unthinkingly adopted it, as did the preoccupied look on her face. He wished she had stayed in bed. Since her excursion into the memory-stones of Kelsingra, she had seemed distracted and weary. He had begged her to stay out of the city for a few days, to rest on Tarman and be away from the stone. She had complied, but even so, she didn’t seem quite herself yet.
‘All of you! Right now!’ Rapskal’s shouted order rang in the air. Leftrin was astounded to see how quickly his captives scrambled to obey him. He had heard scattered talk of the ‘battle’ and most of it had seemed rather incredible to him. He had resolved to hear from a human exactly what had happened, but as he watched Rapskal, he wondered if his account would be any more coherent than those of the dragons had been. The youngster stood, fists on his hips, watching the men disembark. Leftrin mentally sorted them. Here were two merchants, from Bingtown or beyond, and there was a fellow he recognized from Trehaug. Tattooed faces and ragged clothes and their limping gaits proclaimed those bewildered men as slaves, and there, to Leftrin’s astonishment, was Trader Candral from the Cassarick Traders’ Council. He looked a bit the worse for wear, and the bruises on his face appeared to be recently acquired.
The Chalcedeans came ashore in a group, eyes wary and backs straight. They moved with discipline, and he spotted their leader easily as he chivvied them into a tight formation. They might be captives but they had not fully surrendered. Leftrin watched them grimly, knowing well why they had come to the Rain Wilds. Wondering what was to be done with them, he glanced back to see the last of the men leaving the ship. A few lingered behind the rest, checking tie-up lines, and he wagered that the last man walking down the gangplank with slumped shoulders was one of the erstwhile captains. ‘What would it be like, to have someone take your ship from you by force?’ he wondered aloud.
‘A wooden ship or a liveship? Because I don’t think anyone could take our liveship from us. ’ Skelly denied the possibility of ever losing Tarman.
‘It’s been done a time or two, sailor, as you should know. But it’s not a thing I like to think about. ’ Leftrin didn’t look at her as he spoke. He was watching Rapskal’s captives as they left the dock and crowded together on the shore. The other keepers were gathering, expressions of anger and curiosity on their faces. Reyn and Malta were there as well, with Malta clutching her rag doll of a child to her chest. The captives stared wide-eyed at the keepers, as astonished by them as they were by the dragons. What Leftrin noticed was that most of the keepers were staring at Rapskal rather than the strangers he had brough
t among them. They watched him as if he were the novelty, something they had never seen before. Perhaps he was.
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Rapskal strode up and down before his captives, bidding them line up with their fellows. Even so, the Chalcedeans kept to themselves. When it was done to his satisfaction, Rapskal finally turned to the other keepers. ‘Here they be!’ he announced in a ringing voice. ‘Here be the ones who dared come into our territory to shed dragon blood, to slaughter dragons like cattle, for foreign gold. The dragons have defeated them and judged them. Those judged blameless of aggression against dragons shall be ransomed back to their own people. Those who are not ransomed will labour for us, in the village across the river. Those who have risen up against dragons, who have shed dragon blood or showed aggression to dragons, shall be executed by those they have offended. ’
A gasp rose from the assembled keepers and cries of outrage and fear from the prisoners. Leftrin was transfixed with horror. Executions?
Several of the prisoners were shouting that he had told them they could live in service to the dragons. One man fell to his knees weeping and crying out that he had been forced and had had no choice. Leftrin strode forward, and then broke into a run as Rapskal crossed his arms on his chest and set his mouth in a flat line. ‘The truth is not owed to our enemies! I said what I said so that you would labour willingly to bring our captured vessels here. But a man who has lifted a hand against a dragon is not fit to live, let alone live among us. So, you will die. ’
‘No! NO!’ Leftrin roared the word and a silence swept through the gathering as if borne on the wind. His crew came at his heels, to stand with him.
The keepers were clutching at one another, wide-eyed with shock. Thymara, her face white beneath her blue scaling, stepped forward stiffly, walking like a puppet. Leftrin held up a forbidding hand and she halted, agony in her eyes.
‘This is not the Trader way!’ Leftrin shouted. Rapskal transferred his gaze to the captain and his eyes blazed with outrage at the interruption. Leftrin advanced on the Elderling anyway, his burly hands knotting into fists. ‘Rapskal, how can you speak so? Never have we executed anyone! Leave that for Chalced, or corrupt Jamaillia. Never have we condoned slavery, nor have we killed as punishment for wrongdoing. If they did wrong, punish them. Judge a cost, make them labour until it is paid. Exile we have used, and indenturement. But not death! Whence come these terrible ideas? Who allows dragons to be the sole judges of the fates of people?’