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The gold dragon spoke directly to her then, the first time he had done so. His deep bell-like voice resonated in her lungs as his thoughts filled her head. ‘Relpda has parasites eating her from the inside, and a predator has attacked her. I stand watch over her, to be sure that all remember that dragons are dragons’ business.’
‘A predator?’ She was horrified.
‘Go away,’ Mercor told her, ungently. ‘It is not your concern.’
‘Walk with me,’ Leftrin suggested strongly. The captain started to take her arm, and then abruptly withdrew his hand. Her heart sank. Sedric’s words had worked their mischief. Doubtless Sedric had thought it his duty to remind Captain Leftrin that Alise was a married woman. Well, his rebuke had done its damage. Nothing would ever be easy and relaxed between them again. Both of them would always be thinking of propriety. If her husband Hest himself had suddenly appeared and stood between them, she could not have felt his presence more strongly.
Nor hated him more.
That shocked her. She hated her husband?
She had known that he hurt her feelings, that he neglected her and humiliated her, that she disliked his manner with her. But she hated him? She’d never allowed herself to think of him in such a way, she realized.
Hest was handsome and educated, charming and well-mannered. To others. She was allowed to spend his wealth as she pleased, as long as she did not bother him. Her parents thought she had married well and most of the women of her acquaintance envied her.
And she hated him. That was that. She had walked some way in silence at Leftrin’s side before he cleared his throat, breaking in on her thoughts. ‘I’m sorry,’ she apologized reflexively. ‘I was preoccupied.’
‘I don’t think there’s much we can do to change things,’ he said sadly, and she nodded, attaching his words to her inner turmoil before he changed their significance by adding, ‘I don’t think anyone can help the brown dragon. She will live or she’ll die. And we’ll be stuck here until she decides she’s doing one or the other.’
‘It’s so hard to think of her as female. It makes me doubly sad that she is so ill. There are so few female dragons left. So I don’t mind. I don’t mind being stuck here, I mean.’ She wished he would offer her his arm. She’d decided she’d take it.
There was no clear dividing line between the shore and the river’s flow. The mud got sloppier and wetter and then it was the river. They both stopped well short of the moving water. She could feel her boots sinking. ‘Nowhere for us to go, is there?’ Leftrin offered.
She glanced behind them. There was the low riverbank of trampled grasses and beyond that a snaggled forest edge of old driftwood and brush before the real forest began. From where she stood, it looked impenetrable and forbidding. ‘We could try the forest,’ she began.
Leftrin gave a low laugh. There was no humour in it. ‘That wasn’t what I meant. I was talking about you and me.’
Her eyes locked with his. She was startled that he had spoken so bluntly, and then decided that honesty might be the only good thing that could come from Sedric’s meddling. There was no reason now for either of them to deny the attraction they felt. She wished she had the courage to take his hand. Instead, she just looked up at him and hoped he could read her eyes. He could. He sighed heavily.
‘Alise. What are we going to do?’ The question was rhetorical, but she decided she would answer it anyway.
They walked a score of paces before she found the words she truly wanted to say. He was watching the ground as he walked; she spoke to his profile, surrendering all control of her world as she did so. ‘I want to do whatever you want to do.’
She saw those words settle on him. She had thought they would be like a blessing, but he received them as a burden. His face grew very still. He lifted his eyes. His barge rested on the bank before them and he seemed to meet its sympathetic stare. When he spoke, perhaps he spoke to his ship as much as to her. ‘I have to do what is right,’ he said regretfully. ‘For both of us,’ he added, and there was finality in his words.
‘I won’t be packed off back to Bingtown!’
A smile twisted half his mouth. ‘Oh, I’m well aware of that, my dear. No one will be packing you off to anywhere. Where you go, you’ll go of your free will or not at all.’
‘Just so you understand that,’ she said, and tried to sound strong and free. She reached out and took his calloused hand in hers, gripping it tight, feeling the roughness and the strength of it. He squeezed her hand carefully in response. Then he released it.
The day seemed dim. Sedric closed his eyes tightly and then opened them again. It didn’t help. Vertigo spun him and he found himself groping for the wall of his compartment. The barge seemed to rock under his feet, but he knew it to be drawn up on the riverbank. Where was the handle to the damn door? He couldn’t see. He leaned against the wall, breathing shallowly and fighting not to vomit.
‘Are you all right?’ A deep voice at his elbow, one that was not unfamiliar. He fought to put his thoughts in order. Carson, the hunter. The one with the full ginger beard. That was who was talking to him.
Sedric took a careful breath. ‘I’m not sure. Is the light odd? It seems so dim to me.’
‘It’s bright today, man. The kind of light where I can’t look at the water for too long.’ Concern in the man’s voice. Why? He scarcely knew the hunter.
‘It seems dim to me.’ Sedric tried to speak normally, but his own voice seemed far away and faint.
‘Your pupils are like pinheads. Here. Take my arm. Let’s ease you down on the deck.’
‘I don’t want to sit on the deck,’ he said faintly, but if Carson heard him, he didn’t pay any attention. The big man took him by the shoulders and gently but firmly sat him down on the dirty deck. He hated to think what the rough boards would do to his trousers. Yet the world did seem to rock a little less. He leaned his head back against the wall and closed his eyes.
‘You look like you’ve been poisoned. Or drugged. You’re pale as white river water. I’ll be right back. I’m going to get you a drink.’
‘Very well,’ Sedric said faintly. The man was just a darker shadow in a dim world. He felt the man’s footsteps on the deck and even those faint vibrations seemed sickening. Then he was gone and Sedric felt other vibrations. Fainter and not rhythmic as the footsteps had been. They weren’t even really vibrations, he thought sickly. But they were something, something bad and they were directed towards him. Something knew what he had done to the brown dragon and hated him for it. Something old and powerful and dark was judging him. He closed his eyes tighter but that only made the malevolence seem closer.
The footsteps returned and then grew louder. He sensed the hunter crouch down by him. ‘Here. Drink this. It’ll buck you up.’
He took the warm mug in his hands, smelling the dreadful coffee. He raised it to his lips and took a sip, and found the bite of harsh rum hidden in the coffee. He tried to keep from spitting it on himself, choked, swallowed it, and then coughed. He wheezed in a breath and then opened his watering eyes.
‘Is that better?’ the sadistic bastard asked him.
‘Better?’ Sedric demanded furiously, and heard his voice more strongly. He blinked away tears and could see Carson crouched on the deck in front of him. His ginger beard was lighter than his unruly mop of hair. His eyes were not brown, but that much rarer black. He was smiling at Sedric, his head cocked a little to one side. Like a cocker spaniel, Sedric thought viciously. He moved his boots against the deck, trying to get his feet under him.
‘Let’s walk you into the galley, shall we?’ He took the mug from Sedric’s hands, then with apparent ease, seized him by the upper arm and hauled him to his feet.
Sedric’s head felt wobbly on his neck. ‘What’s wrong with me?’
‘How should I know?’ the man asked him affably. ‘You drink too much last night? You might have bought bad liquor in Trehaug. And if you bought any liquor in Cassarick, then it’s almost definitely rotgut. They’ll ferment anything there, roots, peelings from fruit. Lean on me, don’t fight me now. I knew one fellow tried to ferment fish skins. Not even the whole fish, just the skins. He was convinced it would work. Here. Mind your head. Sit down at the galley table. Could be if you eat something, it’ll absorb whatever you drank and you’ll be able to pass it.’
Carson, he realized, stood a head taller than he did. And was a lot stronger. The hunter moved him along the deck and into the deckhouse and sat him down at the galley table as if he were a mother harrying a recalcitrant child to his place. The man’s voice was deep and rumbling, almost soothing if one overlooked his uncouth way of putting things. Sedric braced his elbows on the sticky galley table and lowered his face into his hands. The smells of grease, smoke and old food were making him feel worse.
Carson busied himself in the galley, putting something in a bowl and then pouring hot water from the kettle over it. He stood for a time, jabbing at it with a spoon before he brought it to the table. Sedric lifted his head, looked at the mess in the bowl and belched suddenly. The dark red taste of dragon blood rose up in his mouth and flooded his nose again. He thought again that he might faint.
‘You got to feel better after that,’ Carson observed approvingly. ‘Here. Eat some of this. It will settle your gut.’
‘What is it?’
‘Hardtack softened with hot water. Works like a sponge in the gut, if you got a man with a sour belly or one you got to sober up fast for a day’s work.’
‘It looks disgusting.’
‘Yes, it does. Eat it.’
He hadn’t had any food, and the aftertaste of the dragon blood still lingered in his mouth and nose. Anything, he reasoned, had to be better than that. He took up the wide spoon and stirred the muck.
The hunter’s boy Davvie entered the deckhouse. ‘What’s going on?’ he demanded. There was a note of urgency in his voice that puzzled Sedric. He put a spoonful of soggy hardtack in his mouth. It was all texture and no taste.
‘Nothing you need to worry about, Davvie.’ Carson was firm with the boy. ‘And you have work to do. Get after mending those nets. I’m betting we won’t be moving from here for most of the day. We set a net out in the current, we may get a haul of fish, maybe two. But only if the net is mended. So get to it.’
‘What about him, what’s the matter with him?’ The boy’s voice sounded almost accusing.
‘He’s sick, not that it’s any of your business. You get about your work and leave your elders and your betters to their own. Out.’
Davvie didn’t quite slam the door but shut it more firmly than he needed to. ‘Boys!’ Carson exclaimed in disgust. ‘They think they know what they want, but if I gave it to him – well, he’d find out that he just wasn’t ready for it. But I’m sure you know what I mean.’
Sedric swallowed the sticky mass in his mouth. It had absorbed the dragon blood taste. He ate another spoonful, and then realized that Carson was looking at him, waiting for a response. ‘I don’t have any children. I’m not married,’ he said, and took another spoonful. Carson had been right. His stomach was settling and his head was clearing.
‘I didn’t think you did.’ Carson smiled as if at a shared joke. ‘I don’t either. But you looked to me like someone who would have had some experience of boys like Davvie.’
‘No. I haven’t.’ He was grateful for the man’s rustic remedy, but he wished he’d stop talking to him and go away. His own whirling thoughts filled his head and he felt he needed time to sort them rather than filling his brain with polite conversation. Carson’s words about poison had unsettled him. Whatever had he been thinking, to put dragon’s blood in his mouth? He couldn’t remember the impulse to do so, only that he’d done it. His only intention had been to take blood and scales from the beast. Dragon parts were worth a fortune, and a fortune was what he was after. He wasn’t proud of what he’d done, but he’d had to do it. He had no choice. The only way that he and Hest would ever leave Bingtown together would be if Sedric could amass the wealth to finance it. Dragon blood and dragon scales would buy him the life he’d always dreamed of.
It had seemed so simple, when he’d crept away from the boat to harvest what he needed from the sickly dragon. The creature was obviously dying. What would it matter to anyone if Sedric took a few scales? The glass vials had weighed heavy in his hands as he filled them with blood. He’d meant to sell it to the Duke of Chalced as a remedy for his aches and pains and advancing age. He’d never even considered drinking it himself. He could not even remember wanting to drink it, let alone deciding that he would.
Dragon blood was reputed to have extraordinary healing powers, but perhaps like other medicines, it could be toxic too. Had he truly poisoned himself? Was he going to be all right? He wished he could ask someone; it came to him abruptly that Alise might know. She’d done so much research on dragons, surely she must know something about the effects their blood could have on a man. But how could he ask such a question? Was there any way to frame it that didn’t incriminate him?
‘That pudding helping your stomach at all?’
Sedric looked up suddenly, and regretted it. Vertigo rocked him briefly and then cleared. ‘Yes. Yes, it is.’ The hunter sat down across from him and kept looking at him. Those black eyes locked with his own, as if they wished to see inside Sedric’s head. He looked down at his bowl and forced himself to take another mouthful of the stuff. It was helping his stomach, but he didn’t enjoy the experience of eating it. He glanced up again at the watchful hunter. ‘Thank you for your help. I don’t mean to keep you from your duties. I’m sure I’ll be fine now. As you say, it was probably something I drank or ate. So you needn’t bother about me.’
‘It’s no bother.’
Again the man waited, as if there was something he expected Sedric to say. He was at a loss. He looked down at his ‘food’ again. ‘I’m fine, then. Thank you.’
And still the man lingered, but now Sedric refused to look up from his bowl. He ate steadily in small bites, trying to seem as if it demanded all his attention. The hunter’s attention flustered him. When he rose from his seat across the table, Sedric repressed a sigh of relief. As Carson passed behind Sedric, he put a heavy hand on his shoulder and leaned down to speak right next to his ear. ‘We should talk some time,’ he said quietly. ‘I suspect we have far more in common than you know. Perhaps we should trust one another.’
He knows. The thought sliced through Sedric’s aplomb and he nearly choked on his mouthful of sodden bread. ‘Perhaps,’ he managed to say, and felt the grip on his shoulder tighten briefly. The hunter chuckled as he lifted his hand and left the deckhouse. As the door shut firmly behind him, Sedric pushed the bowl away and cradled his head on his arms. Now what? He asked the enclosed darkness. Now what?
The brown dragon looked dead. Thymara longed to go closer and have a better look at her, but the golden dragon standing over her intimidated her. Mercor had scarcely moved since the last time she had walked past them. His gleaming black eyes fixed on her now. He did not speak but she felt the mental push he gave her. ‘I’m only worried about her,’ she said aloud. Sylve had been dozing, leaned back against her dragon’s front leg. She opened her eyes at the sound of Thymara’s voice. She gave Mercor an apologetic glance and then came over to Thymara.
‘He’s suspicious,’ she said. ‘He thinks someone hurt the brown dragon on purpose. So he’s standing watch to protect her.’
‘To protect her, or to be first to eat her when she dies?’ Thymara managed to keep all accusation out of her voice.
Sylve did not take offence. ‘To protect her. He has seen too many of the dragons die since they came out of their cocoons. There are so few females that even one that is stunted and dull-witted must be protected.’ She laughed in an odd way and added, ‘Rather like us.’
‘What?’
‘Like us keepers. Only four of us are females and all the rest males. Mercor says that no matter how deformed we are, the males must protect us.’
The statement left Thymara speechless. Without thinking, she lifted her hand to her face, touching the scales that traced her jawline and cheekbones. She considered the ramifications of it and then said bluntly, ‘We can’t marry or mate, Sylve. We all know the rules, even if Mercor does not. The Rain Wilds marked most of us from the day we were born, and we all know what it means. A shorter life span. If we do conceive, most of our children aren’t viable. By custom, most of us should have been exposed at birth. We all know why we were chosen for this expedition, and it wasn’t just so we could care for the dragons. It was to get rid of us as well.’
Sylve stared at her for a long moment. Then she said quietly, ‘What you say is true, or used to be true for us. But Greft says we can change the rules. He says that when we get to Kelsingra, it will become our city where we will live with our dragons. And we will make our own rules. About everything.’
Thymara was appalled at the girl’s gullibility. ‘Sylve, we don’t even know if Kelsingra still exists. It’s probably buried in the mud like the other Elderling cities. I never really believed we’d get to Kelsingra. I think the best we can really hope for is to find a place suitable for the dragons to live.’
‘And then what?’ Sylve demanded. ‘We leave them there and go back home, back to Trehaug? And do what? Go back to living in shadows and shame, apologizing for existing? I won’t do it, Thymara. A lot of the keepers have said they won’t do it. Wherever our dragons settle, that’s where we’re staying, too. So there will be a new place for us. And new rules.’
A loud snapping sound distracted Thymara. She and Sylve both turned to see Mercor stretching. He had lifted his golden wings and extended them to their full length. Thymara was surprised to see not only the size of them but that they were marked with eyes like a peacock’s feathers. As she watched, he flapped them again, sharply, gusting wind and the scent of dragon at her. She watched him refold them awkwardly, as if moving them were an unfamiliar task. He snugged them firmly to his back again and resumed his watchful stance over the brown dragon.
Thymara was suddenly aware that a communication had passed between Mercor and Sylve. The dragon had not made a sound, but she had sensed something even if Thymara were not a party to it. Sylve gave her an apologetic look and asked, ‘Are you going hunting today?’
‘I might. It doesn’t look as if we’re going to do any travelling today.’ She tried not to think of the obvious; that until the brown died they were all stuck here.
‘If you do and you get fresh meat …’
‘I’ll share what I can,’ Thymara replied instantly. She tried not to regret the promise. Meat for Sintara, and meat for the sickly copper and the dim-witted silver dragon. Why had she ever volunteered to help care for them? She couldn’t even keep Sintara well fed. And now she had just said she’d try to bring meat for Sylve’s golden dragon Mercor. She hoped the hunters were going out as well.
In the days since the dragons had made their first kill, they had learned to do some hunting and fishing for themselves. None of them were exceptional predators. Dragons were meant to hunt on the wing, not lumber after prey on the ground. Nonetheless, all of them had enjoyed some success. The change in diet to freshly-killed meat and fish seemed to have affected almost all of them. They were thinner, but more muscular. As she strode past some of the dragons, she looked at them critically. With surprise, she realized that they now more closely resembled the depictions of dragons she had seen in various Elderling artefacts. She halted where she was to watch them for a moment.
Arbuc, a silver-green male, was splashing along in the shallows. Every now and then he thrust his whole head into the water, much to the amusement of Alum, his keeper. Alum waded alongside, fish spear at the ready, even as his frolicking dragon drove off any possible game. As she watched, Arbuc spread his wings. They were ridiculously long for him, but he beat them anyway, battering water up and showering Alum with it. His keeper yelled his disapproval and the dragon stopped and stood puzzled, his arched wings dripping. She looked at him and wondered.
Abruptly, she turned her steps and went looking for Sintara. Sintara, not Skymaw, she reminded herself moodily. Why had it injured her pride so much to learn that some of the dragons had never concealed their true names from their keepers? Jerd had probably known her dragon’s name since the first day. Sylve had. She clenched her teeth. Sintara was more beautiful than any of them. Why did she have to have such a difficult temperament?
She found the blue dragon sprawled disconsolately on a patch of muddy reeds and grasses. The dragon rested her head on her front paws and stared out at the moving water. She didn’t lift her head or give any indication she was aware of Thymara until she spoke. ‘We should be moving, not waiting here. There are not many days left before the winter rains, and when they come, the river will run deeper and swifter. We should be using this time to seek for Kelsingra.’
‘Then you think we should leave the brown dragon?’
‘Relpda,’ Sintara replied, a vindictive note creeping into her thoughts. ‘Why should her true name remain unknown while mine is not?’ Sintara lifted her head and suddenly stretched out her front feet and extended her claws. ‘And she would be copper, not brown, if proper care were given to her. Look here. I’ve split a claw end. It’s from too much walking in the water over rock. I want you to get twine and bind it for me. Coat it with some of that tar you used on the silver’s tail.’
‘Let me see.’ The claw was frayed and softened from too much time in water. It had begun to split at the end, but luckily it hadn’t reached the quick yet. ‘I’ll go ask Captain Leftrin if he has twine and tar to spare. While we’re at it, let’s look at the rest of you. Are your other claws all right?’
‘They’re all getting a bit soft,’ Sintara admitted. She stretched her other front foot towards Thymara and spread her toes, extending her claws. Thymara bit her lip as she checked them; they were all slightly frayed at the ends, like hard driftwood finally surrendering to damp. Thinking of wood gave her a possible solution. ‘I wonder if we could oil them. Or varnish them to keep the water away.’
The dragon twitched her foot back, very nearly knocking Thymara over. She examined her claws herself and then responded with a reserved, ‘Perhaps.’
‘Stand up and stretch out, please. I need to check you for dirt and parasites.’
The dragon rumbled a protest but slowly obeyed. Thymara walked slowly around her. She hadn’t imagined the changes. Sintara had lost weight, but gained muscle. The constant immersion in river water was not good for her scales, but walking against the current was strengthening the dragon. ‘Open your wings, please,’ Thymara requested.
‘I’d rather not,’ Sintara replied primly.
‘Do you want to shelter parasites in their folds?’
The dragon rumbled again, but gave her wings a shudder and then unfolded them. The skin clung together like a parasol stored too long in the damp, and smelled unpleasant. Her scales looked unhealthy, the feathery edges showing white, like layers of leaves going to mould.
‘This is not good,’ Thymara exclaimed in dismay. ‘Don’t you ever wash them? Or shake them out and exercise them? Your skin needs sunlight. And a good scrubbing.’
‘They’re not so bad,’ the dragon hissed.
‘No. They’re damp in the folds and smelly. At least leave them unfolded to air while I go get something to help your claws.’ Heedless of Sintara’s dignity, she seized the tip of one of the dragon’s finger-ribs and pulled the wing out straight. The dragon tried to close her wing but Thymara held on stubbornly. It was entirely too easy for her to hold the wing open. The dragon’s muscles should have been stronger. She tried to think of the right word for it. Atrophy. Sintara’s wing muscles were atrophying from disuse. ‘Sintara, if you don’t listen to me and take care of your wings, soon you won’t be able to move them at all.’
‘Don’t even think such a thing!’ the dragon hissed at her. She gave a violent flap and Thymara lost her grip and fell to her knees in the mud. She looked up at the dragon as she began indignantly to fold her wings again.
‘Wait. Wait, what’s that? Sintara, open your wing again. Let me look under it. That looked like a rasp snake under there!’
The dragon halted. ‘What’s a rasp snake?’
‘They live in the canopy. They’re skinny as twigs but long. They’re really fast when they strike, and they have a tooth, like an egg tooth, on their snouts. They bite and hold on, and dig their heads in. And then they just hang there and feed. I’ve seen monkeys with so many on them that they look like they have a hundred tails. Usually the animal gets an infection around the head and dies from that. They’re nasty. Unfold your wing. Let me look.’
It hung from high under the wing, a long nasty snake-like body. When Thymara braved herself to touch it, the dangling thing suddenly lashed about angrily and Sintara gave a startled chirp of pain. ‘What it is? Get it off me!’ the dragon exclaimed and thrust her head under her wing and seized the parasite.
‘Stop! Don’t bite it, don’t pull on it. If you rip it off you, the head will tear free and stay inside and make a terrible infection. Let go, Sintara. Let go of it and let me deal with it!’
Sintara’s eyes glittered, copper disks whirling, but she obeyed. ‘Get it off me.’ The dragon spoke in a tight, furious voice and Thymara was jolted to feel, beneath Sintara’s anger, her fear. An instant later, Sintara added in a low hiss. ‘Hurry. I can feel it moving. It’s trying to dig deeper into me. To hide inside my body.’
