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He took a breath. Tired. Time to return to his bed, to sleep. Tired, yes, but not sickened with weariness. Only tired as any man would be after having to deal with a witch. She opened her mouth to speak. He lifted a cautioning finger. ‘Later,’ he said. ‘After you have had time to think well, and have shown me, yet again, that you can employ your skills for love of me.’ He nodded toward the supine dragon-man. Then he lifted his voice. ‘Guards! I wish to return to my rooms.’

They entered with alacrity. Had they feared for his safety? Good. To his daughter he said, ‘You see. They respect your abilities as I do.’ As they lifted his chair, he leaned back on his cushions. Let her ponder what he meant by that.

‘You are awake.’

He opened his eyes. The room seemed very bright and he quickly lidded them again. He felt her hands on him. They were light and cool as she felt his brow and then slipped her fingers down to his throat to touch his pulse.

‘Don’t go back to sleep. Not until you’ve eaten and drunk.’

‘To make me strong.’ He could manage no more than a hoarse whisper. ‘So your father can bleed me again.’

She didn’t deny it. ‘I knew you were awake and listening. And yes, for now, that is what we must do, to buy time for ourselves.’

‘I must live, waiting for him to want to use me again? That is why I should get better?’ He did not have the strength to put the full outrage he felt into his voice.

‘Not so different from what I have had to do, and more than once,’ she hissed back at him. ‘Do you think that to be kept in a pen and fed like a fattened bullock is so different from being confined until you are bred like a cow for the calf you may drop? Yes. It will be hard for you. It has been hard for me. But we are both still alive. And that is what it will take for both of us to remain alive long enough for us to make a different plan.’

‘What plan?’ He hated that her words made sense to him. He wanted her to be wrong, wanted to be offered a future that did not include the ghastly old man’s withered lips sucking at his wrist.

‘If I knew already, we would not have to make it. Here. Let me help you to sit up a little. I want you to drink some wine, and eat something. It seems you can have whatever you wish to eat or drink now. Is there anything you would fancy? Anything that would tempt your appetite?’

‘Meat. Fresh meat,’ he demanded. He spoke the words without thinking and then fell suddenly silent. He looked up to find her staring at him quizzically.

‘Just a touch of the dragon speaking,’ he said, meaning it as a jest. But he wondered.

...

Day the 12th of the Plough Moon

Year the 7th of the Independent Alliance of Traders


From Sealia Finbok, of the Bingtown Traders

To Hest Finbok, of the Bingtown Traders


To be held at the Cassarick Traders’ Hall


My dearest son, how can you leave us in such suspense? All matter of strange tidings have my friends received from the Rain Wilds, and yet not a word from you! My dear, it is humiliating that I must hear tales of dragons sighted, and the mysterious and sudden departure, upriver, of the very impervious ship that you were on! I am told that it set off without a word to anyone, and that several very important Traders appear to have departed with it! If you know anything of this delicious bit of gossip, I implore you, send me tidings by bird at your earliest possible opportunity! All my friends are boiling with curiosity. Some are saying it was an incredible trading opportunity that led the boat to depart immediately, and others that it has to do with the other ship that followed the Tarman upriver.

My friends are speculating that you have dashed off on a mad adventure to find your missing Alise. They imagine all sorts of romantic reunions and rescues, but I will tell you again, I have always found her an unsuitable match for you. I do hope you will not put yourself into any danger or great inconvenience for her sake.

I am trusting that you will contact me almost immediately, by the swiftest messenger bird that can be hired!


CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Hostages

‘We’re wasting our time, Cap,’ Skelly said. She stood squarely before Captain Leftrin as she spoke. ‘It’s too dark down there, the drop is too long, and the Silver too shallow. We’ll never bail up any Silver dropping that bucket. It lands wrong every time. Weight it to tip on its side, and it’s going to stay tipped on its side, spilling out any Silver it might take in as we haul it back up.’

She paused to draw breath. All around the well mouth, the few keepers who had gathered remained silent. Three fruitless days of fishing for Silver had brought them only discouragement. Carson had insisted today that regular work be resumed. So some had gone to the hunt to add meat to their stores while most of Tarman’s crew was back at the docks, tending Tarman or working on reinforcing the docks. Thymara and Tats had returned to the well to see if any progress had been made.

‘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.’

‘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.

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