Robin Hobb: Dragon Haven

ALUM: Pale skin, silvery gray eyes. Very small ears. Nose almost flat. His dragon is ARBUC, a silver-green male.

BOXTER: Cousin to Kase. Coppery-eyed, short, stoutly built. His dragon is an orange male SKRIM.

COPPER: An unclaimed, sickly brown dragon.

GREFT: Eldest of the keepers, and most heavily marked by the Rain Wilds. His dragon is blue-black KALO, the largest male.

GRESOK: Large red dragon, first to leave the cocooning grounds.

HARRIKIN: Long and slim as a lizard, at twenty, he is older than most of the other keepers. Lecter is his foster brother. His dragon is RANCULOS, a red male with silver eyes.

JERD: A blond female keeper, heavily marked by the Rain Wilds. Her dragon is VERAS, a queen, dark green with gold stippling.

KASE: Boxter’s cousin. He has copper eyes and is short, wide, and muscular. His dragon is the orange male DORTEAN.

LECTER: Orphaned at seven, raised by Harrikin’s family. His dragon is SESTICAN, a large blue male, with orange scaling and small spikes on his neck.

NORTEL: A competent and ambitious keeper. His dragon is the lavender male TINDER.

RAPSKAL: A heavily marked keeper. His dragon is the small red queen HEEBY.

SILVER: Has an injured tail and no keeper.

SYLVE: A twelve-year-old girl, youngest of the keepers. Her dragon is the golden MERCOR.

TATS: The only keeper to have been born a slave. He is tattooed on the face with a small horse and a spiderweb. His dragon is the smallest queen, green FENTE.

THYMARA: Sixteen years old; has black claws instead of nails and is at home in the trees. Her dragon is a blue queen, SINTARA, also known as SKYMAW.

TINTAGLIA: An adult queen dragon, she assisted the serpents on their journey up the river to cocoon. It has been years since she has been seen in the Rain Wilds.

WARKEN: A tall, long-limbed keeper. He is devoted to his dragon BALIPER, a scarlet male.

THE BINGTOWNERS

ALISE KINCARRON FINBOK: Comes from a poor but respectable Bingtown Trader family. The dragon expert. Married to Hest Finbok. Gray eyes, red hair, many freckles.

HEST FINBOK: A handsome, well-established, and wealthy Bingtown Trader.

SEDRIC MELDAR: Secretary to Hest Finbok, and friends with Alise since childhood.

THE CREW OF THE TARMAN

BELLIN: Deckhand. Married to Swarge.

BIG EIDER: Deckhand.

CARSON LUPSKIP: Hunter for the expedition. Leftrin’s old friend.

DAVVIE: Apprentice hunter and nephew of Carson Lupskip. About fifteen years old.

GRIGSBY: Ship’s cat. Orange.

HENNESEY: First mate.

JESS: Hired hunter for the expedition.

LEFTRIN: Captain. Robust build, gray eyes, brown hair.

SKELLY: Deckhand. Leftrin’s niece.

SWARGE: Tillerman. He has been with the Tarman for more than fifteen years.

TARMAN: A river barge, long and low. Oldest existing liveship. Home port Trehaug.

MISCELLANEOUS CHARACTERS

ALTHEA VESTRIT: First mate, Paragon out of Bingtown. Aunt to Malta Khuprus.

BEGASTI CORED: Chalcedean merchant; bald, rich trading partner of Hest Finbok.

BRASHEN TRELL: Captain of the Paragon out of Bingtown.

CLEF: Ship’s boy on the Paragon, former slave.

DETOZI: Keeper of the messenger birds at Trehaug.

DUKE OF CHALCED: Chalced’s dictator, elderly and ailing.

EREK: Keeper of the messenger birds at Bingtown.

MALTA KHUPRUS: The Elderling “queen,” resides in Trehaug. Married to Reyn Khuprus.

PARAGON: A liveship. Helped escort the sea serpents up the river to the cocooning grounds.

SELDEN VESTRIT: A young Elderling; Malta’s brother and Althea’s nephew.

SINAD ARICH: Chalcedean merchant who strikes a deal with Leftrin.

Day the 5th of the Prayer Moon

Year the 6th of the Independent Alliance of Traders

From Erek, Keeper of the Birds, Bingtown

To Detozi, Keeper of the Birds, Trehaug

A message from Trader Jurden to be delivered to the Trehaug Rain Wild Traders’ Council, regarding an order for Sevirian cutlery and the unfortunate shortage that has caused an unexpected and substantial increase in the price for it.

Detozi,

Greetings! The king pigeons have proven disappointing for speed and homing ability, but their swift breeding habits and quick growth to size make me wonder if there is an opportunity to create a supply of food birds that might be especially suitable to raising in the Rain Wilds. Your thoughts on this?

Erek

The humans were agitated. Sintara sensed their darting, stinging thoughts, as annoying as a swarm of biting insects. The dragon wondered how humans had ever managed to survive when they could not keep their thoughts to themselves. The irony was that despite spraying out every fancy that passed through their small minds, they didn’t have the strength of intellect to sense what their fellows were thinking. They tottered through their brief lives, misunderstanding one another and almost every other creature in the world. It had shocked her the first time she realized that the only way they could communicate with one another was to make noises with their mouths and then to guess what the other human meant by the noises it made in response. “Talking” they called it.

For a moment, she stopped blocking the barrage of squeaking and tried to determine what had agitated the dragon keepers today. As usual, there was no coherence to their concerns. Several were worried about the copper dragon who had fallen ill. It was not as if they could do much about it; she wondered why they were flapping about it instead of tending to their duties for the other dragons. She was hungry, and no one had brought her anything today, not even a fish.

She strolled listlessly down the riverbank. There was little to see here, only a strip of gravel and mud, reeds and a few scrawny saplings. Thin sunlight touched her back but gave small warmth. No game of any size lived here. There might be fish in the river, but the effort of catching one was scarcely worth the small pleasure of eating it. Now, if someone else brought it to her…

She thought about summoning Thymara and insisting the girl go hunting for her. From what she had overheard from the keepers, they’d remain on this forsaken strip of beach until the copper dragon either recovered or died. She considered that for a moment. If the copper died, that would make a substantial meal for whichever dragon got there first. And that, she decided bitterly, would be Mercor. The gold dragon was keeping watch. She sensed that he suspected some danger to the copper, but he was guarding his thoughts now, not letting dragons or keepers know what he was thinking. That alone made her feel wary.

She would have asked him outright what danger he feared if she hadn’t been so angry at him. With no provocation at all, he had given her true name to the keepers. Not just to Thymara and Alise, her own keepers. That would have been bad enough. But no, he had trumpeted her true name out as if it were his to share. That he and most of the other dragons had chosen to share their true names with their keepers meant nothing to her; if they wanted to be foolishly trusting, it was up to them. She didn’t interfere between him and his keeper. Why had he felt so free about unbalancing her relationship with Thymara? Now that the girl knew her true name, Sintara could only hope that she had no idea of how to use it. No dragon could lie to someone who demanded the truth with her true name or used it properly when asking a question. Refuse to answer, of course, but not lie. Nor could a dragon break an agreement if she entered into it under her true name. It was an unconscionable amount of power that he had given to a human with the life span of a fish.