Blood of Dragons (41 page)

As his fellow keepers began to close in around him, he lifted up his hands and his voice. ‘Hostages! Disembark and show yourselves.'

‘Hostages?' Skelly asked in disbelief.

‘That's what he said,' Leftrin growled at her, and then went forward to be certain the captured ships were not left completely unmanned. Hennesey followed him, and with a shrug and a jerk of her head, Skelly motioned to Big Eider. They trailed their captain while Swarge looked on from Tarman's deck, smoking a pipe and shaking his head in disapproval.

Leftrin glanced back once at his own vessel. Alise, still looking pale, had come out of their stateroom and onto the deck. She was freshly attired in a long, pale-green tunic over leggings and boots of darker green. Her long red hair, freshly plaited, hung in loops to her shoulder and was secured with rows of bright pins. He knew that style. He had seen it portrayed in mosaics in the city. It worried him that she had unthinkingly adopted it, as did the preoccupied look on her face. He wished she had stayed in bed. Since her excursion into the memory-stones of Kelsingra, she had seemed distracted and weary. He had begged her to stay out of the city for a few days, to rest on Tarman and be away from the stone. She had complied, but even so, she didn't seem quite herself yet.

‘All of you! Right now!' Rapskal's shouted order rang in the air. Leftrin was astounded to see how quickly his captives scrambled to obey him. He had heard scattered talk of the ‘battle' and most of it had seemed rather incredible to him. He had resolved to hear from a human exactly what had happened, but as he watched Rapskal, he wondered if his account would be any more coherent than those of the dragons had been. The youngster stood, fists on his hips, watching the men disembark. Leftrin mentally sorted them. Here were two merchants, from Bingtown or beyond, and there was a fellow he recognized from Trehaug. Tattooed faces and ragged clothes and their limping gaits proclaimed those bewildered men as slaves, and there, to Leftrin's astonishment, was Trader Candral from the Cassarick Traders' Council. He looked a bit the worse for wear, and the bruises on his face appeared to be recently acquired.

The Chalcedeans came ashore in a group, eyes wary and backs straight. They moved with discipline, and he spotted their leader easily as he chivvied them into a tight formation. They might be captives but they had not fully surrendered. Leftrin watched them grimly, knowing well why they had come to the Rain Wilds. Wondering what was to be done with them, he glanced back to see the last of the men leaving the ship. A few lingered behind the rest, checking tie-up lines, and he wagered that the last man walking down the gangplank with slumped shoulders was one of the erstwhile captains. ‘What would it be like, to have someone take your ship from you by force?' he wondered aloud.

‘A wooden ship or a liveship? Because I don't think anyone could take our liveship from us.' Skelly denied the possibility of ever losing Tarman.

‘It's been done a time or two, sailor, as you should know. But it's not a thing I like to think about.' Leftrin didn't look at her as he spoke. He was watching Rapskal's captives as they left the dock and crowded together on the shore. The other keepers were gathering, expressions of anger and curiosity on their faces. Reyn and Malta were there as well, with Malta clutching her rag doll of a child to her chest. The captives stared wide-eyed at the keepers, as astonished by them as they were by the dragons. What Leftrin noticed was that most of the keepers were staring at Rapskal rather than the strangers he had brought among them. They watched him as if he were the novelty, something they had never seen before. Perhaps he was.

Rapskal strode up and down before his captives, bidding them line up with their fellows. Even so, the Chalcedeans kept to themselves. When it was done to his satisfaction, Rapskal finally turned to the other keepers. ‘Here they be!' he announced in a ringing voice. ‘Here be the ones who dared come into our territory to shed dragon blood, to slaughter dragons like cattle, for foreign gold. The dragons have defeated them and judged them. Those judged blameless of aggression against dragons shall be ransomed back to their own people. Those who are not ransomed will labour for us, in the village across the river. Those who have risen up against dragons, who have shed dragon blood or showed aggression to dragons, shall be executed by those they have offended.'

A gasp rose from the assembled keepers and cries of outrage and fear from the prisoners. Leftrin was transfixed with horror. Executions?

Several of the prisoners were shouting that he had told them they could live in service to the dragons. One man fell to his knees weeping and crying out that he had been forced and had had no choice. Leftrin strode forward, and then broke into a run as Rapskal crossed his arms on his chest and set his mouth in a flat line. ‘The truth is not owed to our enemies! I said what I said so that you would labour willingly to bring our captured vessels here. But a man who has lifted a hand against a dragon is not fit to live, let alone live among us. So, you will die.'

‘No! NO!' Leftrin roared the word and a silence swept through the gathering as if borne on the wind. His crew came at his heels, to stand with him.

The keepers were clutching at one another, wide-eyed with shock. Thymara, her face white beneath her blue scaling, stepped forward stiffly, walking like a puppet. Leftrin held up a forbidding hand and she halted, agony in her eyes.

‘This is not the Trader way!' Leftrin shouted. Rapskal transferred his gaze to the captain and his eyes blazed with outrage at the interruption. Leftrin advanced on the Elderling anyway, his burly hands knotting into fists. ‘Rapskal, how can you speak so? Never have we executed anyone! Leave that for Chalced, or corrupt Jamaillia. Never have we condoned slavery, nor have we killed as punishment for wrongdoing. If they did wrong, punish them. Judge a cost, make them labour until it is paid. Exile we have used, and indenturement. But not death! Whence come these terrible ideas? Who allows dragons to be the sole judges of the fates of people?'

Emotions flickered over Rapskal's face. The set of his mouth wavered and for a moment, a startled boy looked out at Leftrin. ‘But it has always been so, has it not? Death the punishment for attacking a dragon?' he asked in honest confusion, all the eloquent elocution gone from his voice.

‘Rapskal! Stay, stay with us, don't go!' Thymara leapt forward suddenly and seized him in her arms. ‘Don't go. Look at me, speak to me. You are Rapskal! Remember yourself!'

Tats joined her, putting a hand on Rapskal's shoulder. Sylve stepped forward and tall Harrikin, each putting a hand on him. In another breath, Rapskal was surrounded by all the keepers, all straining to touch him.

Leftrin watched in confusion. ‘Don't go?' he muttered to himself.

‘You were right to warn him, my dear, all those weeks ago.' He turned, startled, to find Alise beside him. Her gaze met his, her grey eyes true. ‘Elderling or not, he has spent too much time in the memory-stone. It is not that he has drowned, but that the memories of someone else's lifetime have overshadowed his own. I know the man who lives again in Rapskal. Tellator. He was a leader among the Elderlings during a time of war with their neighbours. He was passionate in all things, and bloody-minded in his hatred of those who fought against them.' She shook her head slowly. ‘We would like to believe the Elderlings were always wise and kind, but their roots were human. They had their failings.'

‘I have to protect the dragons,' Rapskal was saying now. He looked around at the worried faces of his fellows and added, ‘What else are we to do with such villains? Let them live among us? Let them go, to plot further against us? I – I don't like to kill, Thymara. You know I am not even a good hunter. But in this, what else are we to do?'

The bunched prisoners sensed the division in those they faced. Some howled for mercy, others shouted that they were Traders and only the Council could judge them. Three men made a break for freedom, only to have Heeby trumpet a warning at them that stopped them in their tracks. The red dragon half-opened her wings and advanced on the men, her jaws wide. They retreated into the huddle of prisoners. The Chalcedeans had formed up, back to back. Weaponless, they would still fight. Leftrin shook his head. ‘What
are
we to do?' he asked no one quietly.

The world had gone mad.

Hest stood in the centre of the captives, his head bowed, the hood of his cloak up. On the final leg of the journey up the river he had asserted his rights to his stateroom and his possessions, such as they remained. Most of the Chalcedeans had gone onto the other ship, and no one else had the will to challenge him. It had been a relief to don different clothing and throw his worn-out rags over the side. The foods and wine Redding had brought aboard for them had largely been consumed by their Chalcedean captors, but the bed and bedding had seemed an exotic luxury after his days of sleeping in the hold. He had still had to help work the deck and labour in the galley, but he had managed not to have to take an oar. Between what remained of his own clothing and Redding's, he was warmly and almost stylishly attired again, and he had found time enough to shave and to trim his own hair. He had not known what to expect when they docked in Kelsingra but had fallen back on one of his father's old axioms: a man who bears himself with authority will often have authority ceded to him. And so he had locked himself in his room and readied himself for the city and all it might hold, emerging only when he knew docking was under way and thus avoiding most of the work. And when the order had come to disembark, he had taken care to blend with the others until he knew what sort of welcome awaited them.

Yet he had not been prepared for the reality he confronted. He had expected a muddy excavation, or vine-draped ruins. When they had come around the final bend in the river and seen Kelsingra spilled out across the hillsides, he had been just as shocked as the rest. To see a vast city flung wide across low-rolling hills had been astonishing. How could such a place have ever existed, let alone withstood the ravages of time, weather and nature?

And how much treasure did it hold?

However Kelsingra had survived, here it was. Yes, the docks were gone, replaced by makeshift planks, logs and crude pilings, but they functioned. And when a small committee of Elderlings had come down to meet the ships, he had decided they were the ones he must impress with his importance. Shock and horror had numbed him when the scarlet man condemned some to death and others to slavery. It was only now, as the denizens of the place squabbled with one another and shouted over the top of one another, that he pieced together the puzzle. They were not truly Elderlings. These were the banished Changed ones, sent off with the dragons. They had dressed themselves in Elderling finery and for a time he had been deceived. There was the old
Tarman
, the ugliest liveship ever built, as evidence. So, if this was where the ship had ended its voyage and these were the survivors … He lifted his head but kept the hood of his cloak pulled well forward as he surveyed the gathered ‘Elderlings'.

After seeing the ferocity of the dragons and enduring his own journey up the river, he had doubted if either Alise or Sedric had survived. Both of them lacked his adventurous nature, and Alise especially was a creature of drawing-rooms and teashops. If he found himself a widower, as Alise's heir he would—

And then he recognized her. The incongruity of her gleaming garments with her plain features almost broke a guffaw of laughter from him. Her freckles were more obvious than ever, and if possible, the red of her hair was redder. Contrasted with the slender and youthful ‘Elderlings' in their bright garb, she looked short and stout. Her hair hung in ropes, and the snug trousers she wore showed every curve of her calves. Scandalous attire for any Bingtown woman, it was even more shocking on a woman of her years. She chose to stand with the rough-cut ship's crew; did she think their crude company made her look superior? If so, she was mistaken; the contrast was even more laughable.

Then, as he watched in abhorrence, the weathered ship's captain who had first dared to countermand the execution order put an arm around Alise and pulled her to his side. Did she struggle? No. She leaned into his familiarity, letting her head drop onto his shoulder. It was when she set her open hand to his chest that he realized with affront that she was intimate with the man. A common river-man, coarse and ignorant, was bedding the wife of one of Bingtown's most eminent Traders? The insult was unthinkable, to him and to his family. He could not, would not take her back into his home and bed. Dirtied as she was, how could she bear him an heir worthy of the Finbok name? He would disown her and dissolve the marriage!

But
not
before he had asserted his right to half of her claim to the city. As his eyes roved over Kelsingra, the magnitude of that fortune stunned him. He almost laughed over his earlier fears. There were his ‘captors', probably less than two dozen people. Why, their captives outnumbered them! He tried quickly to count the clustered keepers, to work out Alise's approximate percentage of claim to the city, but they were milling and clustering tightly around the scarlet man who had condemned the Chalcedeans. One of them shouted something about judging the ‘foreigners'. Ridiculous. They had no authority! Tall they might be, but their scaled faces were still young, almost childish.

Even so, he had nothing to fear from their judgment. He had not done any physical harm to a dragon, nor could anyone ever prove he had intended to. As a Bingtown Trader, only the Bingtown Council could sit in judgment on him. These people might be dressed in Elderling clothing, but if they presumed to judge him, they'd soon have the Council and every Trader in Bingtown on their backs. Masquerade as they might, they were still citizens of the Rain Wilds and subject to its laws. They might detain him, might even demand ransom of his family, but eventually they would find that their little gaggle of misfits could not stand before the combined economic might of the Rain Wild and Bingtown Councils. If they thought they could ship treasure from here and live by their own rules, they'd be sadly surprised when they found the sole navigable waterway held against them. Young as they were and foolish, they probably had no idea of how things had always worked. Neither Bingtown nor Trehaug nor Cassarick would suffer their grip on the Elderling artefact trade to be loosened.