Blood of Dragons (50 page)

‘Nice enough. Do you want your curtains opened? It's clear but not very warm out there.'

‘Please. What's the worst that can happen? I catch my death of cold?'

‘The infection will kill you first,' she said bluntly.

‘I know how bad it is,' he admitted. ‘It hurts and the healers told your father that next time he must take blood from my other arm, lest the infection spread to him. I'm not looking forward to that.' His fingers twitched against his bedding as he thought of it. Bad enough to have the Duke break open the cut on his arm every few days. Adding another one was a whole new horror. ‘I'm dying,' he said, trying the words aloud. ‘His drinking my blood is killing me.'

‘And every time he takes your blood, he seems to get stronger. He is so triumphant about it. It's disgusting.' She pushed the heavy curtains aside and tied them back. The sky was blue with puffs of white cloud in the distance. No mountains in this direction. The horizon stretched on to forever. The wind wandered into the room.

‘Maybe when I die, he will start to fail again.'

‘Maybe. I won't live to find out. If you die, then I die, too.' She came back to sit on a stool by his bed.

‘I'm sorry.'

She made a strangled noise. ‘Scarcely your fault that my father is killing you. Nor mine. I was born into this disaster. I'm sorry that you fell into it.' She looked out of the window. ‘I've been thinking that if you die, I won't wait for him to discover it and punish me for it.' She nodded toward the balcony. ‘I may jump from there.'

‘Sweet Sa!' Selden exclaimed in horror. He tried to sit up but he was not quite strong enough.

‘Not in despair, my friend. Just to make it harder for him to pretend I died a natural death. If I leap from here, it may be that some will see me fall. There are people who have pledged to avenge me if I die at my father's hands.'

Selden felt far colder than he had before. ‘And your leaping will launch a wave of vengeance?'

‘No,' she continued to look at the sky. ‘I hope to avert it. There was a time when I wanted people to know what he had done to me; I dreamed they would all rise up and avenge my death. Now I think about it like ripples ringing out from a dropped stone. Do I want my death to result in misery and death for others? Or would I rather slip away at a time of my choosing?' She reached over and took his good hand without looking at him. ‘I don't really want to die at all,' she confided to him in a whisper. ‘But if I have to, I'm not going to let him be the one to make me die. I'm not going to wait here alone, wondering if he will torture me first.' She finally made eye contact with him and tried for a faint smile. ‘So, when you go, I'll go, too.'

He looked at the tray on the low table beside him. The cream soup still steamed slightly. Slices of mushroom interrupted that calm sea. A brown loaf of bread was beside it and a shallow dish of pale-yellow butter. Stewed Chalcedean peppers, purple, yellow and green, surrounded a slab of steamed white fish. All so prettily arranged. They wanted him to eat well. He knew why. Earlier, he had defiantly refused the food. It had seemed pointless to eat, merely an exercise in extending his life as a blood source for the Duke. Now it seemed a way to extend Chassim's life. ‘While there's life, there's hope,' he said.

‘So they say,' she conceded.

He reached for the napkin and shook it out.

‘I'll give them another three or four days of my work here, to shore up those pilings. Then we have to load up and head downriver. Reyn sent a bird back to that fellow at Cassarick, asking if our seed and stock had come in from Bingtown. No bird has come back yet, so I guess we'll have to go back there and find out for ourselves. I think it flew off in the wrong direction myself. Anyway. We've got a lot to straighten out in Cassarick. I still haven't been paid. And I'm not letting the Council get away with that.'

‘What about the other boats? Will they go with us?'

Leftrin shook his head. He was seated across from Alise at the little galley table. Thick white mugs of brown tea steamed on the scarred board between them. An empty platter held only crumbs of the bread and cheese they had shared. They were the only ones aboard, but the boat wasn't quiet. As always, Tarman and the river had their own conversation as the current tugged at him and his lines restrained him. Good sounds, Alise thought. Here on Tarman, she was immune to the whispering lure of the memory-stone. When she and Leftrin planned their future, as they did now, the only voices she heard were their own.

‘Those boats might be “impervious” but they were handled rough. There's dragon scorch and broken oars and all sorts of repair they need. The hold of one of them is disgustingly filthy. And we don't have enough real sailors for a proper crew. Those slaves didn't know much more than how to pull an oar and had no reason to try to learn more. None of them started out wanting to be sailors, either. It's going to take time for them to get used to being free men. They all seem a bit stunned yet. So there's a lot to be done before we worry about whether they want to work a deck or not. Teaching the keepers to operate their own boats is going to be a task for milder days, when the river runs quieter.'

Leftrin chewed his lower lip thoughtfully, and then pushed his mug of tea to one side. ‘You know how Tillamon told Reyn she knew at least a dozen young women who wouldn't mind leaving Trehaug and Cassarick behind for a chance to walk in the summer breeze without a veil? She got permission from the other keepers to invite them here. Well. I'm thinking I know a few able deckhands who might be persuaded to come this way, at least for a time. It's easier to teach a young captain his business if he's worked the deck himself. But, lacking that, I'd like to find experienced crew for them to learn with.'

‘So much to think about,' Alise murmured. New settlers for Kelsingra. Farm animals and seeds for crops. Did anyone here know how to care for them? She did not enquire if anyone had asked him to teach the new captains their business. She was sure he had just assumed it. She smiled as she asked him, ‘Which of the keepers will step up to captain the boats?'

‘Not sure. Rapskal might. He's looking for something lately and that would be better than some of the wild talk I've heard from him.'

She shook her head sadly. ‘I think that's wishful thinking. Not that he couldn't rise to that if he wanted to. But the stone memories have changed him. All he speaks of now is the need to put an end to the threat against the dragons. A permanent end. I don't think he understands how far away Chalced is, or what sort of resistance he and Heeby would face.'

‘Wouldn't be only him and Heeby. Kalo's hot to take vengeance on them. Fente wants to go, as do Baliper, Sestican and Dortean. Ranculos, too. And Tintaglia, of course. She says that once she's fed up a bit, she's taking her wrath to them.'

‘Mercor?' she asked faintly. She suspected that if the golden went, all of the others would follow.

‘He's keeping his own counsel, so far. I don't know what he thinks. But Rapskal keeps stirring up the keepers. You know about that armoury they found?'

‘I do.' Not even to Leftrin had she mentioned that she had discovered it a long time ago but never mentioned it to Rapskal. Her discovery of it had further changed her image of Elderlings. And dragons. The battle gear for the dragons had been mostly decorative, with rings where perhaps riders had once secured themselves. Sintara's assertion that dragons had never been ridden by humans had seemed disproven to Alise, but the blue queen had insisted that carrying an Elderling into battle was not the same as being ridden like a donkey. The thought she had conveyed was that, in that instance, the dragon was using the Elderling as a sort of auxiliary weapon rather than serving him as a charger.

There had been armour for Elderlings hung neatly on hooks on the stone walls. It mimicked the scaling of dragons in how the fine plates overlapped one another as well as in colours. The wooden shafts of the spears were long gone, bows and quivers of arrows faint outlines of dust on the floor. But the arrow-points and spearheads had survived. There were other devices there, of green-coated brass and iron infused with Silver, ones she did not recognize even as she guessed their martial uses.

‘Those young men tried on that armour and helms like Jerd trying on jewellery,' Leftrin complained. ‘They have no idea of what it means. But if Rapskal and Kalo and Tintaglia keep urging them on, I think they'll soon find out.'

She shied away from thinking about it. ‘So. If you were choosing captains for those two ships, who would you train?'

‘Harrikin, I'm thinking. He's steady. Maybe Alum. Lad seems capable and smart.'

She lowered her face to hide a grin at that. She suspected he could not imagine Skelly with a man who didn't know how to run a boat. His next words surprised her. ‘But it might not be a keeper who steps up, you know. Dragons keep them pretty tied up. Could be Hennesey stepping up to take a command. Or Skelly, when she's a bit more seasoned.'

‘So many changes,' she mused. ‘There will have to be regular freight runs until Kelsingra can support itself. And after that, maybe we'll be selling meat and grain to the Rain Wilds. New settlers coming to Kelsingra. They'll have to understand what they're risking, of course, but I think Tillamon is right. There will be people who are willing to come and start fresh here. And we'll need what they know. Farmers and smiths, bakers and potters and carpenters … but they'll come. It's not often that people are offered the chance to just begin anew.'

‘Not often,' he agreed. He was silent, mulling something. Then, ‘Be my wife,' he said suddenly.

She stared at him, startled by the sudden change in topic. ‘I can't, Leftrin. Until my marriage contract is formally annulled, I'm still marri—'

‘Don't say you're married to him! Please don't. I hate to hear those words come from your mouth.' He reached across the table and set his fingertips on her lips. He looked at her with earnest grey eyes. ‘I don't care what they say in Bingtown or anywhere else in the world. He broke his contract a long time ago. He never even meant to honour it, so how could you ever have been his wife? Be mine, Alise. I'm already yours. I want to call myself your husband. Marry me here, in Kelsingra. Start a new life with me here. Forget Bingtown and its rules and contracts.'

She tilted her head. ‘You don't want a marriage contract?'

‘I don't need one. If you want one, you can draw up anything you want and I'll sign it. I won't bother reading it because anything you want to say about how it is going to be will be fine with me. I don't need a paper or a contract or any of that. Just you.'

‘What brought all this on?' Alise felt flustered.

He shook his head. ‘I knew Hest existed. I knew you'd been his. There were times when I felt like a thief. There was a day when Sedric took me on about it, saying that I was going to ruin your whole life by loving you. Made me feel selfish and low for wanting you.'

‘It seems a lifetime ago.' She smiled at him. ‘We used to worry about such peculiar things.'

‘It doesn't bother you now? What Hest might say when he goes back to Bingtown?'

‘After Sedric spoke up? No. I think he will say as little as he possibly can and hope others do the same. Before he leaves, I will speak to him and ask him to give me my nullification. We can draw it up, and there are plenty of possible witnesses. It will happen quietly here. I will send my explanations to my family, and he will have to deal with his.' She took a breath and met his gaze with clear eyes. ‘I've finished with him, Leftrin. Did you doubt it?'

He dropped his gaze. ‘Worst thing I ever heard in my life was him calling you “my darling”. I wanted to rip the tongue out of his mouth. Wanted to tear him into pieces with my hands and feed the bits to Spit.'

He spoke with a low vehemence she had never heard before from him. ‘My dear!' she exclaimed, torn between shock and laughter.

‘He was frightening you. I could see that, I could feel it. I wanted to destroy anything that could scare you like that.'

‘I was scaring myself. Giving him power he didn't really have. Just like I used to do.' She smiled almost sadly. ‘It's done, Leftrin. All done.' She stood up and walked around the galley table to stand behind him. She leaned forward to embrace him and spoke by his ear. ‘I'm looking forward to sailing away with you.'

‘Won't be much privacy aboard for a time until we off-load all those intruders in Trehaug.' He shook his head. ‘I'll be glad to give over the judging of the Chalcedeans to someone else. Poor bastards, caught between the mortar and the pestle. Doubt there's anything left for them to go home to. But I'm not looking forward to having a whole boatload of them all the way to Trehaug.'

She gave him a quick kiss and as he pulled her closer, she said, ‘So perhaps we should use this quiet time well, now.'

‘I can't be gone long. I'm off watch now, but my uncle will have more work for me. As always.'

‘Keeps you busy, does he?' Hest was amused. ‘Probably thinks you are too young to manage your own life. That's often the case with men who take on the care of young boys. They don't see when they've become young men, ready to take wing on their own.'

Davvie's eyes flickered to Hest's, neither confirming nor denying that he resented Carson's control of him. He cleared his throat. ‘I'm surprised you haven't gone up the tower yourself to take a look around. It's allowed to any of you. We decided that at the meeting.'

‘Indeed,' Hest agreed. ‘But looking around from a tower isn't the same as having someone explain the layout of the city.' He was letting the lad do most of the talking, and he was talking himself into far more than Hest had thought he could persuade him to. Today, a visit to the tower together. Tomorrow, perhaps, a brief stroll outside. The boy preceded him up the stairs and he had a fine view of the lad's hips and legs. He was young, younger even than Sedric had been, and even more green to the ways of the world. He'd break easily, Hest decided. Entice him with elegant and sophisticated pleasures he had never even imagined. Tempt his young hunger for adventure and worldliness. Make him see that only Hest could introduce him to that wonderful world.