Robin Hobb - Blood of Dragons

‘We had a small mutiny,’ Leftrin explained to her as he guided her back to their cabin. ‘They thought they could take over Tarman and make the ship their own. Ignorant fools. I can’t believe they thought they could get away with that on a liveship.’

The Chalcedeans had travelled in chains on the deck since then, wearing the slave manacles that Hennesey had quietly transferred to Tarman before they departed Kelsingra. It horrified Alise, but she was more horrified by the injury to Big Eider, who had been dazed for several days afterwards. Several of the former galley slaves had stepped forward to help man the ship during his convalescence. The crew had hesitantly accepted their aid at first; now they almost seemed to belong on Tarman’s deck.

Leftrin looked over the captives and shook his head. ‘Traders don’t execute anyone,’ he said. ‘They’ll be condemned to work off their crime, possibly in the excavations. Cold, hard work that grinds a man down. Or maybe they’ll be ransomed back to Chalced, with extra penalties for being spies.’

Alise looked away from them. Not executions but death sentences, she thought to herself. It wasn’t fair, not for men forced by threats to do as they had done.

‘Looks like they have room for us at the end,’ Hennesey called back to them. He was standing ready with a mooring line as Swarge guided Tarman in. Alise craned her neck and saw that substantial sections of the old dock had been replaced with new planks.

‘Let’s tie up,’ Leftrin grumbled, and then he left her side, and she and Tillamon moved up onto the roof of the deckhouse to be out of the way of the crew working the deck. The two Jamaillian traders were already up there, as well as the other merchants. The remaining members of the impervious boats’ crews had been pressed into service for the journey down, and worked alongside Tarman’s crew and the former slaves. Alise was well aware that the liveship needed little help from humans when travelling with the current, but as Leftrin had observed, ‘A busy sailor has less time to get into mischief. And there isn’t a man among them who hasn’t dreamed of working on a liveship. Maybe we’ll find a lively one or two to take back to Kelsingra with us, to crew the keepers’ vessels.’

Trader Candral was there, too, looking pale with dark-circled eyes. He had been an especially unpleasant passenger, weeping or complaining how he had been tricked into his treachery and once trying to bribe Leftrin with promises of later riches if he would just let him off the ship without ‘betraying’ him. Alise found it hard even to look at him. It had been a crowded journey, and she was looking forward to having them all off Tarman’s decks.

A sizeable crowd had gathered to meet them. Alise recognized Trader Polsk, and perhaps a few others from the Traders’ Council. Several were dressed formally in their Trader robes; all watched them approach gravely. Others seemed to be just gawkers and bystanders, drawn down to the dock for whatever spectacle the Tarman might offer.

Skelly jumped from the boat to the docks with the first mooring line and quickly made Tarman fast. She caught the second line that Hennesey tossed, and in moments the liveship was secured. The Council members surged forward to meet them and at once the Jamaillian merchants began shouting that they had been kidnapped and held against their will and their investment, a lovely impervious ship, had been stolen from them. Trader Candral joined his voice to theirs, exhorting them not to believe a word of what Leftrin or anyone else said of him: he had been forced to pen a false confession.

In the midst of the general cacophony, Alise saw the Chalcedean prisoners come to their feet, lift the length of anchor chain that joined them, and begin their dull shuffle to the gangplank. Their heads were bowed. One man was muttering something in a low voice, perhaps a prayer. As they neared the gangplank, one at the end of the line began shouting frantically and trying to pull away. The other men looked at him, grim-faced, and then two of his fellows seized him and dragged him along.

‘Sit down. Not ready for you yet,’ Hennesey told them irritably. His lower lip was still bruised and swollen, and his tone plainly conveyed his dislike for his charges. But if they understood that he spoke to them, they gave no indication. If anything, they stepped up their pace. Trader Candral was now shrieking almost hysterically that it was all a lie, he had never betrayed the Rain Wilds, while the Jamaillians were trying to out-shout him with their badly accented accusations of piracy and kidnapping.

Alise divined their intention a moment too late. ‘Don’t let them!’ she shouted, even as the first four Chalcedean captives stepped up onto the gangplank. And then off, into the river.

Connected by their chains, the others followed them, some willingly, others not. Hennesey and Skelly caught hold of the last two, but the weight of the chained men and the pull of the current snatched them out of their hands and into the water. The grey river closed over the last man’s scream, cutting it off as if it had never been.

Silence cloaked the dock.

Skelly stared, stricken, at her empty hands and scratched wrists. The last man had not wanted to go into the river.

‘No one could have stopped that,’ Hennesey told her. ‘And it was probably a better death than they would have faced back in Chalced.’ A muttering began from the shore. Before it could rise any louder, Leftrin stepped to his ship’s railing. ‘Dragons are on their way to attack Chalced, to punish them for hunting dragons! Send word to Bingtown that they must be braced for retaliation.’

A breathless quiet followed his words.

Tillamon shocked everyone when she lifted her voice. ‘And perhaps Cassarick and Trehaug may wish to consider well what happens to cities that harbour dragon-killers!’

Day the 21st of the Plough Moon

Year the 7th of the Independent Alliance of Traders

From Kerig Sweetwater, Master of the Bird Keepers’ Guild, Bingtown

To Erek Dunwarrow of Trehaug

Erek, old friend, this is not an official notification. It will take the Guild Masters here a month of dithering before they can decide to take the action, but I am sure it will be approved. Your name is almost the only one that has come up to fill the recently vacated post of Keeper of the Birds at Cassarick. Kim had risen to control his own coop and oversee those of his journeymen. There will be fewer birds and journeymen under your supervision than in your Bingtown post, but I feel it will be every bit as difficult a task. It is a large responsibility and to be honest, you will be stepping into a shambles of dirty coops, unhealthy birds, poorly kept records and undisciplined apprentices.

So, of course, I consider you precisely the man for the job!

But if, by any chance, this is not something you would take on, please notify me immediately via a Dunwarrow carrier, and I shall withdraw my advocacy of you.

Not likely, say I!

With pride in my former apprentice,

Kerig

Reyn felt slightly queasy. He took a deep breath, reached for his water-skin and took a sip. It helped. A little. This mode of travelling by dragon was, as he had hoped, much different from when Tintaglia had once carried him clutched in her claws. Back then, his fear and worry that Malta was already dead and the clench of the dragon’s powerful feet on his ribs had distracted him from the actual flight. This time he rode high, between her wings, the wind in his face; and always aware of how high above the ground he was and how much his seat swayed with the motions of her flight. His back ached and his stomach was very unhappy.