Robin Hobb - Ship of Magic

Davad suddenly went pale and made shushing motions with his hands. But Ronica was relentless. “Do you know what it does to a woman, Davad, to carry something inside her for nine months, not knowing if it's the child and heir they've been praying for, or if it's a malformed monster that her husband must strangle with his own hands? Or something in between? You must know what it does to a man. As I recall, your Dorill was pregnant three times yet you only had two children.”

“And the Blood Plague carried them all off,” Davad admitted brokenly. He suddenly lowered his face into his hands and Ronica was sorry, sorry for all she had said, and sorry for this pathetic shell of a man who had no wife to tell him to relace his tunic and scold the tailor for badly fitting trousers. She was sorry for all of them, born in Bingtown to die in Bingtown, and in between to carry on the curse-plagued bargain their forebears had struck. Perhaps the worst part of that bargain was that one and all, they had come to love Bingtown and the surrounding green hills and valleys. Verdant as a jungle, soil black and rich in the hand, crystal water in the streams, and abundant game in the forests, it offered them wealth beyond the dreams of the sea-weary and draggled immigrants who had first been brave enough to anchor in the Bingtown harbor. In the end, the real contract had been made, not with the Satrap who nominally claimed these shores, but with the land itself. Beauty and fertility balanced with disease and death.

And something more, she admitted to herself. There was something in calling oneself a Bingtown Trader, in not only braving all the strangeness that came down the Rain Wild River, but claiming it for one's own. The first Traders had tried to establish their settlement at the mouth of the Rain Wild River itself. They had built their homes on the river's edge, using the roots of the stilt-trees as foundations for their cottages, and stringing bridges from home to home. The rising and falling river had rushed by beneath their floors and the wild storm winds had rocked their tree houses at night. Sometimes the very earth itself would heave and tremble, and then the river might suddenly run milky white and deadly, for a day or a month.

For two years the settlers had abided there, despite insects and fevers and the swift river that devoured anything that fell into it. Yet it had not been those hardships, but the strangeness that had finally driven them away. The little company of Traders had been pushed south by death and disease and the odd panics that might strike a woman as she kneaded the bread, the furies of self-destruction that could come on a man gathering wood and send him leaping into the river. Of 307 households that had been the original Traders, sixty-two families had survived that first three years. Even now, from Bingtown to the mouth of the Rain Wild River there stretched a trail of abandoned townsites that marked the path of their attempts at settlement. Finally, here in Bingtown, on the shores of Trader Bay, they had found a tolerable distance from the Rain Wild River and all that flowed down it. Of those families that had chosen to remain as settlers on the Rain Wild River, the less said the better. The Rain Wild Traders were kin and a necessary part of all Bingtown was. She acknowledged that. Still.

“Davad?” She reached across Ephron to touch their old friend's arm gently. “I'm sorry. I spoke too roughly, of things better left unmentioned.”

“It's all right,” he lied into his hands. He lifted a pale face to meet her eyes. “What we Traders do not speak of amongst ourselves is common talk among these newcomers. Have not you noticed how few bring their wives and daughters with them? They do not come here to settle. They will buy land, yes, and sit on the Council and wring wealth out of Bingtown, but in between they will sail back to Jamaillia. That is where they will wed and keep their wives, where their children will be born, that is where they will go to spend their aging years and send but a son or two here to manage things.” He snorted disdainfully. The Three-Ships Immigrants I could respect. They came here, and when we honestly told them what price this sanctuary would cost them, they still stayed. But this wave of newcomers arrive hoping only to reap the harvest we have watered with our blood.”

I he Satrap is as much to blame as they are,” Ronica agreed. “He has broken the word that was given to us by Esclepius, his forebear. It was sworn to us that he would make no more grants of land to newcomers, save that our Council approved it. The Three-Ships Immigrants came with empty hands, but willing backs, and they have become a part of us. But this latest wave come clutching land grants and claim their leffers with no regard for who or what they harm. Felco Treeves claimed his land on the hillsides above Trader Drur's beer valley, and put cattle to graze on it. Now Drur's springs that flowed so clear are yellow as cow's piss, and his beer is scarcely drinkable. And when Trudo Fells came, he claimed as his own the forest where all had been free to cut firewood and oak for furniture, and…”

“I know, I know it all,” Davad cut in wearily. “Ronica, there is naught but bitterness in chewing these thoughts again. And there is no good in pretending that things will go back to how they once were. They will not. This is but the first wave of change. We can either ride over the wave or be swamped by it. Don't you think the Satrap will sell other grants of lands, once it is seen that these newcomers prosper? More will come. The only way to deal with them is to adapt to them. Learn from them, if we must — and take up their ways where we must.”

“Aye.” Ephron's voice was like a rusted hinge breaking free. “We can learn to like slavery so well that we do not care when our grandchildren may become slaves because of a year's debts mounting too high. And as for the sea serpents that the slaveships lure into our waters, chumming them along with the bodies they throw overboard, well, we can welcome them right into Trader Bay and never need the boneyard again.”

It was a long speech for a sick man. He stopped to breathe. At the first sign of his wakening, Ronica had arisen to fetch the poppy milk. She drew the stopper from the heavy brown bottle, but Ephron slowly shook his head. “Not yet,” he told her. He breathed for a moment before he repeated, “Not just yet.” He turned his weary gaze to Davad, whose tactless dismay at Ephron's weakness was writ large on his face. Ephron gave a feeble cough.

Davad bent his face into an attempt at a smile. “It's good to see you awake, Ephron. I hope our conversation didn't disturb you.”

For a moment or two Ephron just stared at the man. Then, with the casual rudeness of the truly ill, he ignored him. His dull eyes focused on his wife. “Any word of the Vivacia?” he asked. He asked the question as a starving man might ask for food.

Ronica shook her head reluctantly as she set the poppy milk down. “But she should not be much longer. We have had word from the monastery that Wintrow is on his way home to us.” She offered these last words brightly, but Ephron only turned his head slowly against the pillow.

“What will he do? Look solemn and beg an offering for his monastery before he leaves? I gave up on that boy when his mother sacrificed him to Sa.” Ephron closed his eyes and breathed for a time. He did not open his eyes before he spoke again. “Damn that Kyle. He should have been back weeks ago… unless he's taken her to the bottom, and Althea, too. I knew I should have put the ship in Brashen's hands. Kyle's a good enough captain, but it takes Trader blood to truly feel the ways of a liveship.”

Ronica felt the blush rise in her cheeks. It shamed her to have her husband speak so of their son-in-law in Davad's presence. “Are you hungry, Ephron? Or thirsty?” she asked to change the subject.