Blood of Dragons

  As the ship approached the heart of the city’s waterfront, Leftrin could see that the keepers had attempted to rebuild the dock. Rough logs had been roped or pegged to the standing-stone pilings that were all that remained of the ancient docks. It did not look very sturdy and he questioned his wisdom in listening to Rapskal. Right after they had witnessed the dragon attack on the boat, Heeby had flown over them, Rapskal on her back. The keeper had shouted down to them, over and over, to come to Kelsingra, not the village. When Swarge had waved that he understood the message, the dragon and boy had flown off. It had taken the combined efforts of Tarman and the full crew to battle their way across the river and work their way along a shore where the water ran deep and swift. The village side of the river had offered slower and more shallow water, and a wide and sandy bank for the ship to wedge itself against. Here, they had only the makeshift new dock and a strong deep current pushing against them. Leftrin was aware of how stubbornly his liveship paddled against that rush, how his hidden tail thrashed as his crew pulled valiantly at their oars, steering him toward the dock.

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  The keepers had come down to greet them. Wisely, most of them remained on the shore. Carson was on the dock, ready to catch a line as soon as it was thrown to him. Harrikin was with him, and, to Leftrin’s amazement, so was Sedric, looking more muscular and fit than when Leftrin had last seen him. Harrikin and Sedric were clad in bright clothing, as were the rest of the keepers; evidently the city had yielded up a bit of its treasure to them. His brow furrowed as he wondered how Alise felt about that.

  The tethered logs of the dock moved with the current, rising and falling steadily. On the crumbling street behind the docks, the other keepers were massed. Much as he longed to scan that crowd for Alise’s face, he knew that his ship required all his attention just now. He kept his place on top of the deckhouse, bellowing course corrections as Tarman fought the seething current as they moved toward the dock and pushed steadily upstream until they were past it.

  ‘Drop anchor!’ Hennesey roared and Big Eider obeyed, deploying a kedge anchor first on the port side and then another on the starboard side of the barge. Chain and then line played out swiftly as the crew continued to fight the current. Then the anchors caught and the liveship curtseyed to the water as the lines took the ship’s weight. A moment later, there was a lurch as the port anchor dragged a short distance before lodging firmly on the bottom.

  ‘Even them out!’ Leftrin bellowed to Hennesey, but the mate was already in motion, assisting Big Eider in that very task. As the ship came into alignment, they began the careful process of paying out line to let the current carry them downstream to a position parallel to the docks.

  Leftrin prayed there were no concealed pilings from the old dock hiding beneath the river’s rush. The space between Tarman and the dock narrowed and still the ship’s unseen legs and tail fought to gain a place alongside the dock and hold there. Plainly, Tarman did not trust the kedge anchors completely. It made the task of docking him more difficult, but Leftrin allowed the liveship to follow his own instincts. Finally, they were close enough for lines to be flung. Sedric caught the first one and quickly wrapped it around one of the few remaining stone supports from the fallen dock. Carson caught the next, and quickly wrapped it around a wooden upright. It groaned, swayed slightly and then held. Other lines were tossed, caught, and tied. As soon as Tarman was somewhat secured, longer lines were run out, past the dock and up onto dry land. With a fine disrespect for the city’s antiquity, one was tied off around an Elderling statue, while another was taken in through the window of a small stone structure and then out of the door before being made fast. It was a sloppy tie-up, as if an immense spider had trapped the liveship in a web. Leftrin waited, but the lines held. He breathed out.

  ‘It will do for now,’ he told Hennesey. ‘But I don’t like it and neither does Tarman. I want you or me on board at all times, and I don’t want the crew to go far. At least three hands on board at every moment. Once we get off-loaded, then we’ll head back across the river and beach Tarman there. Jaunting back and forth in the ship’s boats from the village to Kelsingra won’t be fun but at least he’ll be safe there. ’

  Hennesey nodded grimly.

  ‘Let’s unload right away, then,’ said Leftrin. ‘As soon as we see our passengers safely ashore. Get it started. I want a word with the ship. ’

  Hennesey jerked his head in a nod and was gone. In a moment, he was shouting the orders that would get the cargo moving onto the deck for off-loading. A chorus of greetings rose from the waiting crowd on shore. Leftrin gave a single wave as he made his way forward. He saw Hennesey leaning over the side, exchanging words with Carson. The big hunter could move with alacrity when he needed to, and as if by magic, the keepers were suddenly lining up like ants as they readied themselves to act as stevedores. Big Eider was personally assisting Malta across the deck and down onto the wobbly dock. She clutched her baby, refusing to surrender him to anyone, while Reyn followed closely behind her, looking anxious. Leftrin noticed that Hennesey was waiting to perform the same service for Tillamon. He folded his lips, and then decided that it was up to Reyn to intervene if he thought anything improper was going on. And perhaps not even Reyn, given that Tillamon was a woman grown.

  He reached the foredeck and leaned on the wizardwood railing. ‘Ship. You going to talk to me?’

  He felt the familiar thrumming of a liveship’s awareness. Tarman was eldest of the liveships, built long before anyone had any idea that wizardwood was anything other than finely grained and excellent-quality timber. He’d been built as a barge, with the traditional painted eyes for watching the river’s current, but no figurehead such as the other liveships boasted. While his ‘painted’ eyes had become ever more expressive over the years, he had no carved mouth with which to speak. Usually Leftrin shared his ship’s feelings on an intuitive level, or when Tarman intruded directly into his dreams. Only rarely did the captain have the sensation that the ship was speaking to him in actual words. He had always respected however little or much Tarman chose to share with him. Only rarely, when he felt there was a direct threat to his vessel, did he make such a request. Now he leaned on the railing and waited, hoping.

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  He felt the ship’s uneasiness, but he would have had to be stone to be unaware of that. Every one of the crew was moving with a quick nervousness that said that at any moment they could spring into action to save the ship if the anchors dragged or the dock gave way. ‘Not safe here, is it, Tarman? We need a better place than this to tie up on this side of the river if we want you to be here for any length of time. But once we’re unloaded, we’ll get you out of here and across and onto the beach. It will be good to rest, won’t it?’

  As he spoke, Leftrin glanced up at the sky. Working with experienced longshoremen on sturdy docks at Trehaug, it had taken most of a day to get supplies aboard. Now crates were being wrestled down a gangplank and onto a rickety, bobbing dock, and then hauled from the dock to the shore. At a quick glance, it appeared to Leftrin that about ten of the keepers were present, and all seemed frantically engaged with the unloading. He saw that Reyn and Malta had made it ashore and that Tillamon was standing with them. And there, in a familiar gown, her red hair an unruly cascade down her shoulders, was his Alise, taking charge of them. He gave a small groan, longing to be there, to pick her up and hold her against him and smell again her sweet scent.

  Not yet.

  I know, ship. Not yet. My duty is here. And I’ll stay aboard you until you’re safe on the other side.

  He glanced up at the sky, calculating time, and realized that he might have to spend the night tied up here. He wondered if Alise would join him, and smiled, guessing that she might be very willing. The ship’s anxiety pulled his attention back.

  Not yet. The child is not yet safe.

  Alise will help them. She’ll get them to a dragon,
perhaps Mercor. Maybe Heeby. One of them will certainly be willing to help the baby.

  Maybe. If they can. I have done what I could.

  If they can? Leftrin didn’t like the feel of that thought. He had believed that bringing the baby here for one of the dragons to treat would solve everything. Persuading a dragon to take it on had been the only obstacle he had foreseen. Do you think all the dragons will refuse us?

  The right one must be there and must agree. The response was slow and Leftrin sensed that his ship struggled to convey something. He decided to let it go. Mercor had been the most communicative among the dragons in the past. Perhaps he would be willing to shed more light on the creation of Elderlings and what the baby might actually need. Yet he was heavy-hearted at the thought of breaking this news to Malta. He ventured another query to his ship. Would the baby be better off if it remained on board for now? Could you continue to help him?

  The response was reluctant. As much as could be done, I have done.

  And our thanks to you, Tarman.

  He felt no acknowledgement from the ship, and no further touch upon his mind. It was Tarman’s way, and for himself, Leftrin was grateful that his liveship was more taciturn than most. He did not think he could have enjoyed a chatterbox like the Ophelia or a moody and dramatic ship like the Paragon. But there, it was probably like it was for children. Each parent thought his or hers was the best and doubtless every captain would prefer his own liveship to any other.

  That brought a tiny nudge from Tarman.

  I am the best. Eldest, wisest, best.

  Of course you are. I’ve always known that.

  And again, there was no acknowledgement of Leftrin’s remark. But that was what he’d expected.

  Malta looked around her in a daze. A long corridor led off into gently lit dimness. At intervals, doors opened off it, most closed but a few ajar. ‘Any open door?’ she asked wearily.

  ‘Any open door,’ Alise Finbok affirmed. ‘If a keeper has already claimed a room, then the door is closed. And most of them were long ago locked by their previous owners and we haven’t found any way to open them. I’d suggest one of those last three at the end of the hall. They are larger with several chambers and beds. We think that perhaps they were for visiting delegations from other cities. Of course, we have no basis for that theory, other than it was the only one any of us could imagine. ’

  ‘Thank you. ’ The two words were almost more than Malta could manage. Her body was still flushed from a hot bath and her hair was damp on her shoulders. They had been the only inhabitants of the dragon baths. Malta vaguely appreciated that at any other time she would have been awed by the immense chamber with the distant ceilings and the magic of the hot flowing water. But sorrow and weariness had driven all wonder from her heart. In a daze, she had rubbed days of salty sweat from her body. The hot water had drained away the aches from her bones, but also the last of her stubborn strength.

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  Alise had been so kind as to hold the wailing Phron while Malta bathed and washed her hair. He was quiet now in her arms, but Malta could feel that his little body was slack with weariness, not sleepy and content. He had cried himself out in Alise’s arms and come back to his mother as limp as a rag doll. He had seemed to be asleep when she had gently lowered his little body into the water. But his eyes had opened at its embrace, and she had been pleased to see him stretch out in the steaming bath and wave his little arms and legs about in it. He had patted the water’s surface and looked first startled and then pleased at the splashes he made. She had smiled to see him behave so much like an ordinary child. But as the coloured scales on his body had flushed and then deepened in hue, she had known a wave of uneasiness. ‘Something is happening to him!’

  ‘That happened to the keepers, too,’ Alise had assured her. She had waited at the edge of the immense tub, a drying cloth open and ready to receive the baby. Malta had smiled up at her. The Bingtown woman had not changed nearly as much as the other members of the expedition. It took a discerning eye to notice the scaling behind her eyebrows and on the backs of her hands. Her words still held the intonation of the scholar. ‘The hot water made the dragons grow quite a bit and seemed to ease their aching. We could literally see the colours spreading on their wings and then deepening. They stretched, and their bodies seemed to take on a new alignment. And they grew, some startlingly. Tinder went from pale lavender to a deep purple with gold tracery. Spit had always had a rather stubby tail. Now it seems the appropriate length for his body. After a day or two of access to the water and warmth, almost all the dragons could take flight from the ground. And now, of course, they all can. The keepers experienced similar changes: brighter colours, lengthening limbs. Thymara’s wings are astonishing now. ’

  ‘Wings?’

  The older woman nodded. ‘Wings. And Sylve may be growing a crest on her brow. ’

  ‘Did I change?’ Malta had asked her immediately.

  ‘Well, you seem to shimmer more brightly to me. But perhaps that is a question better asked of your husband, who knows best how you usually look. ’

  Politeness ruled Alise. She would not say what Malta knew was true. She had been so unkempt from her constant vigilance over little Ephron during the journey that Alise could not tell if the changes in her scaling were merely that she was clean now, or if her dragon characteristics had advanced. Malta found she didn’t care and smiled wearily. Look what it had taken to erode girlish vanity, she thought to herself. Merely threaten my son’s life and none of it mattered any more.

  She looked down into his little face. He was silent but not asleep. His face did not look like the face of any baby she had ever seen before. His little mouth was pinched up as if he were in pain, and his breath whispered through his narrow nostrils. She tried to see him impartially; was he an ugly child, doomed to be rejected by other children as he grew? She had found she could not tell. He was Ephron, her little boy, and his differences were part of who he was, not points to be compared with others. With a forefinger, Malta had traced the fine scaling that outlined his brows, and he closed his eyes. She had handed him to Alise who wrapped him in the waiting towel, while she waded wearily out of the water.

  Her skin had dried quickly in the warm chamber, and Alise had supplied her with an Elderling gown of shimmering pink. The gleaming colour reminded Malta of the inside of a conch shell. At another time, she would have longed to see herself in a mirror, to admire the supple fall of the soft fabric. But at the pool’s edge all she had wanted was her child back in her arms.

  Now she stared numbly down the hall of closed and opened doors. Choices, some she might make and others closed forever to her. How did one ever know how one small choice might forever change the course of one’s life?

  ‘Let me show you a chamber I think you’ll like and settle you there for the night. In the morning, after you’ve rested, if you don’t like it, you can change it. ’

  Malta realized that she hadn’t moved nor spoken in several minutes. Had she fallen asleep standing up? ‘Please,’ she said faintly, and did not mind when Alise took her arm and guided her down the hall. It was a relief to be away from the keepers’ noisy and joyous welcome. When they had introduced themselves, several had seemed stunned. ‘The King and the Queen of the Elderlings!’ someone had whispered.

  Malta had shaken her head, but it had not seemed to affect their awe. They had pelted them with hundreds of questions and Reyn, knowing her exhaustion, had tried to answer them. The girls had seemed entranced by her baby and even the boys had come to look on him in amazement.

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  ‘Like Greft,’ one of them had exclaimed as he stared at her boy. A taller keeper on the verge of manhood had bade him hush and pulled the scarlet-scaled boy aside. Reyn had read her anguished look and drawn the keepers off, while suggesting strongly that Alise help her find a place to bathe and rest. Now here she was, barely able to make sense of thing
s as the evening drew to a close. She had come all this way, hoping to be greeted by dragons. None had appeared. Now all she wanted was Reyn back, wanted her little family close at hand again.

  At the end of the hall Alise escorted her through a door that swung wide at her touch. The room had been dark but it lit as they entered, gaining sourceless light slowly until a warm glow suffused the room. There was no hearth, Malta noticed with dismay, and almost as if Alise heard her, she said, ‘The rooms stay comfortably warm. We don’t know how. The chairs and the beds soften as you sit on them, and we don’t know how that works either. There is still so much to learn about Kelsingra. There is no bedding either. Perhaps the Elderlings had no need for it when the rooms stayed warm. Some of the closets had clothing in them, and a few of the shelves and cupboards held personal items. Some things were of obvious use, such as brushes and necklaces, and others we didn’t understand at all. I’ve urged all the keepers to leave non-essential items in place until we can learn more. But,’ a small sigh, ‘they do not listen to me very well. Jerd is the worst, treasure-hunting from building to building and amassing more jewellery than one woman could wear in a lifetime, with no thought as to where it came from or who wore it before her. Goblets made of gold, as if we had wine worthy of them. A mirror that shows what it should have reflected the moment before, so she can examine the back of her head. And useful items as well. A pot that warms whatever is put into it. Stockings with sturdy soles that adjust to the wearer’s foot … Oh. I’m sorry. I’m chattering away while you stand there. Come. This room only has a table and chairs, as if for a gathering of people, as you can see. But here is a bedchamber, and those other two doors also go to bedchambers. As soon as you sit down on one of the beds, it will start to soften to your form. ’