Blood of Dragons (19 page)

‘My father did not tell me, no. My suitor … Chancellor Ellik … bragged of it. When he … came to … tell me that you would be put in my care.' The smoothness had gone out of her speech. Her words hitched along and he sensed a terrible story behind them.

Her eyes had gone distant and dark. He reached out to touch her arm. She gave a small shriek and leapt away from him. She stared at him wildly. ‘What is it?' he demanded. ‘Tell me what you know.'

She retreated from him, reached the covered window and halted there. He feared suddenly that she might fling the cover wide and throw herself through the window. Instead, she turned back to face him, a cornered animal, and flung the words at him as she might fling stones at hounds baying after her. ‘He cannot have dragon's blood, so he will have yours! He will consume you, as he consumes every living being that comes near him. Consume and destroy, for his own dark ends!'

To hear her speak the words made the unthinkable something he must confront. A strange coldness filled him slowly, flowing out from his bones. When he spoke, his voice was higher than usual, as if air could not quite reach the bottom of his lungs. ‘It won't work,' he said desperately. ‘I am as human as you are. My dragon has changed me, but I am not a dragon. Drink my blood, eat my flesh, it will not matter. He will die just as surely as I will.'

Full knowledge of the fate the Duke intended for him penetrated his mind. He had not, at first, comprehended why they had taken a sample of his flesh and skin when he was being sold. He had thought then that it was to prove that he was scaled. The wound on his shoulder from that ‘sample' still oozed through the clean bandaging the woman had applied to it. He had thought it was healing and left it alone, but the girl had abraded away the thick scab to reveal the festering infection beneath. He wrinkled his nose as he recalled how bad it had smelled.

Even the meaning behind the Duke's words when he had first been brought before him had slipped past Selden's cognizance. But this woman who had been entrusted with his care seemed determined to make him confront it. She studied him from across the room, then, as abruptly as she had taken flight, she calmed. Her voice was low as she crossed the room to sit by his couch. ‘The Duke knows that your flesh and blood will not serve him as well as a dragon's would. Knows it, and does not care. He will spend you ruthlessly, using you as a stopgap measure to keep himself alive until he can obtain the genuine cure.'

She tugged his blanket straight, her lips folded. Then spoke without hope. ‘And so I must heal you of infection, and clean your body, and ply you with food and drink, just as if you were a cow being fattened for the slaughter. We are both his cattle, you see. Chattel to be used however it best suits him.'

He stared into her face, expecting to see anger or at least tears. But she looked wooden, her eyes fixed on a hopeless future. ‘This is monstrous! How can you just accept what he does to me? To you?'

She gave a bitter laugh and slumped on the simple wooden stool and gestured around the little room. It was small and comfortably appointed, but the bars on the window and the stout door proclaimed what it was: a gilded cage. ‘I am as much his captive as you are, and as human as you say you are, but it will make no difference to him. He will consume us both. I am the bribe that he offers Ellik in return for the Chancellor doing all he can to preserve my father's miserable life. It gives me a little comfort that you say that if he consumes you, your death will not buy him more life.' She looked down at her hands and confided hopelessly, ‘Once, I had planned to outlive him and then to proclaim myself his rightful heir. All my brothers are dead, either at my father's hands or of the blood plague. And I am eldest of my sisters and the only one not wed away in trade. The throne should be mine upon his death.'

He looked at her incredulously. ‘Would his nobles support you in such a claim?'

She shook her head. ‘It was a silly dream. Those I attempted to rally to my cause are, ultimately, as powerless as I am. It was the fancy I concocted to give purpose and hope to my life. Now it's gone. I have no way left to reach out to those who also shared my ambition. Instead I shall comfort myself with the knowledge that he will not outlive me by much, if at all.'

Selden furrowed his brow. ‘But you are a young woman. Surely you shall outlive your father by many years.'

‘My father's daughter might have a long lifespan, but not Ellik's wife, I think. His last wife gave him heir sons for his own fortune and name. That was all he needed of her, and when he was finished with her, her life was finished, too. He needs but one son from me to establish a regency the other nobles will not challenge. I am sure that is why the mother of his sons died so suddenly; to make space for me.' She looked at him. ‘I did not know her but I mourn her. His last woman has scarcely begun to rot in her grave, and Ellik is ready to begin on me. No. I will be consumed just as you are. But not, I am told, until I have restored you to health. So. To hasten our ends, you should eat.' Her tone became falsely light, a mockery of the tragedy in her eyes.

She rose and brought a little table to his bedside. On it was a tray with a large covered dish set beside two smaller ones. She lifted the lid on the large dish. Selden stared at a mound of raw meat cut into chunks. An inadvertent sound of disgust welled from his throat. She stared at him. ‘Are you not hungry?'

‘If it were cooked,' he said faintly. At the prospect of food, his mouth had begun to water, but the bloody red chunks of flesh only reminded him of his ultimate fate. He turned away, swallowing. His wakened hunger was making him nauseous.

‘I can remedy that,' she said, and for the first time, her voice seemed free of bitterness. ‘I can toast it over the hearth here, and will welcome whatever you leave. My father does not think it fitting that women consume flesh. This is my provender.' She uncovered the two smaller dishes. One held grain porridge with a generous pat of butter still melting in the centre of it, and the other a heap of boiled vegetables in an orange, yellow and green heap. At the sight of them, Selden's stomach growled loudly. The homely smell of stewed turnips, carrots and cabbage almost brought tears to his eyes.

Chassim was silent for a moment. ‘If we share all, there is enough for both of us to dine well.' Her voice was hesitant, her eyes downcast.

‘Please,' he begged, and something in that simple word woke the first shadow of a smile he had seen on her face.

‘Please,' she said softly to herself, as if the word were foreign to her. ‘Yes. And with thanks.'

Day the 28th of the Fish Moon

Year the 7th of the Independent Alliance of Traders

From Sealia Finbok, wife of Trader Finbok

To Hest Finbok, beloved Son

A message to be held for him at the Trehaug Traders' Concourse.

My dear boy, you left Bingtown with scarcely a word to us! I do not even know where you lodge in Trehaug. Still, I need you to know that your father is quite angry to learn that Trader Redding's son accompanied you. He says that he expressly forbade you to take a companion with you, something that I regard as quite ridiculous. How could anyone tolerate an extended journey to a place as backward as the Rain Wilds without a cultured and witty fellow to help pass the tedium? To calm his wrath, I told him a bit of a story, that is, that
I
insisted you take Redding with you as I was concerned for your safety, travelling alone in such an uncivilized place. So, when you return, you must agree with my story when your father asks you.

Most Important! Lissy Sebastipan has broken her engagement to Trader Porty's son Ismus! She discovered that he had a bastard daughter with a girl from a Three Ships family. The whole town has been buzzing, for their wedding was to have been the social event of the year. I am in an agony of sympathy for Lissy's mother, yet at the same time, I confess that I do see a wonderful opportunity here for you! I am sure you take my meaning!

Please do not waste too much time on what I perceive as a useless mission. Come home, annul your contract for abandonment, forget that eccentric and ungrateful woman and let me find you a faithful and appropriate wife.

Should you have time to do any trading, I have heard that some absolutely amazing deep-purple flame jewels have recently been unearthed. Do look into this rumour, and feel free to use the family credit if they prove worthy of purchase.

With all affection, and the desire that you use your travel time to revive your poor broken spirit and renew your enjoyment of life,

Your loving Mother

‘Alise! Alise, are you in there?' Alise straightened up slowly. She had been hunched over a table-top inlaid with very detailed illustrations of dragon anatomy. She now realized she had been hearing shouts in the distance for some time, but had blocked them from her mind, assuming they were only the city's memories trying to invade her. Most often the city's whispers were a distraction. Today, cleaning and studying the diagrams, the whispers had been informative. She prayed she might never
need
to know how to remove a broken tooth from a dragon's jaw, but valued the knowledge all the same.

‘I'm here,' she called, wondering who needed her for what now. The interruptions always seemed to come when she was in the most interesting part of something, and for what? So that she could identify a stove part or something that someone had found. Earlier in the week, it had been Rapskal with an armful of very large buckles set with sparkling stones. ‘I know these are important,' he had said without preamble. ‘I know that I know what they are, but when I reach for the memory, it slides away. It isn't something I used to deal with directly, but I know that someone did it for me and it was important to me and my dragon.' He had taken a breath and added mournfully, ‘I found them in a pile of rubble behind my house. Something bad happened there, Alise. I know it.'

She'd looked at him dispassionately. He would never be her favourite person, but seemed artlessly unaware of how devastating his comments had been to her. He was the one who had pointed out that she was not an Elderling and never would be. He was the one who had told her that she had no say over what they did with the city, that the city belonged to the new Elderlings, not her. True as those statements had been, they had still devastated her and turned her life upside down. She'd had to change her image of herself from the very bones out. Ultimately, she knew, it had been good for her. That did not mean she enjoyed being reminded of it.

‘
You
never touched one of these before today,' she pointed out to him. ‘But you may have sampled the memories of someone who did.' An understatement if there was one. All knew how obsessed Rapskal was becoming with his ‘other' self's memories. She took one of the buckles from him and turned it slowly in her hands. ‘It's from a dragon's harness. Not for battle armour but for show. Perhaps as part of a victory parade or other celebration—'

‘Battle harness?' he had interrupted her. ‘Battle harness? YES! Yes, that's it, that's what this reminded me of. But … but …' Mouth slightly ajar, his eyes went distant and the light went out of his face. ‘I don't remember all of it. I should, but I don't know …'

‘Go to the Hall of Records, the building with the map tower. Climb up, oh; I think it was on the third storey. There are many wall decorations there that you can study to see how the harness was made and fitted.'

‘Yes. Yes, now I remember. Heroes were honoured there. Valiant men and dragons of great battle prowess …' Absently, he took the buckle from her hands. Clutching it to his chest, he'd left her standing without even a thank you as he hurried off to try to recover a piece of a self he'd never been. She sighed. Leftrin had warned them all, but nothing she could say now would dissuade any of them. Lingering too long in memory-stone was dangerous.

And exciting.

She might not be an Elderling but privately she still believed she was the one best suited to extract the city's secrets. The knowledge she had gleaned from her studies prepared and anchored her. It was not so foreign to her, and yet she could hold tight to her humanity and not be swept away. Still, it was frightening to let her own life and thoughts be swept aside in the stream of memories stored in the city's stones. She had learned a new discipline in this city. When she ventured into her memory sampling, it was for a specific purpose and she kept her attention tightly focused on what she wanted to know, refusing all other tugs at her attention. It was like diving into deep cold water to retrieve a sparkling stone.

‘Alise!'

The voice came again and she recognized it as Sylve's. Before she could respond, the keeper called once more, ‘Alise? Are you in here? Tarman's coming. They're back!'

‘I'm back here, Sylve!' Then the meaning of the girl's shout penetrated her distracted mind. Tarman had been sighted. Leftrin! He was back! And she was on the wrong side of the river. He'd be expecting to find everyone at the village site, not in the city. She leapt to her feet, dragon dentistry discarded. Leftrin was coming, and she looked a fright! She hurried to the door of the chamber and peered out into the tall, wide corridor. ‘Where's Heeby?' she demanded as Sylve came barrelling toward her. Behind the girl, the tall double doors stood open to the gusty wind of the spring day. Alise hoped the little dragon and her keeper would carry a message to the ship for her.

‘She and Rapskal are guiding Tarman in! Carson says he thinks our dock will hold, but not be very good for unloading yet. He's worried about it, but I think it will be a good test of what we built.'

‘Tarman is coming directly here?' She had even less time to prepare for him.