Blood of Dragons

‘Tats!’ Thymara called, and he glanced back to see her running toward him. The back of her Elderling tunic stirred as her wings struggled to open. She had confided to him that sometimes that happened when she hurried, as if some part of her thought she should take flight. Now as she came toward him, smiling, the wind lifting her hair, he saw how much the wings were changing her. She carried them, a weight on her back, and even folded, their angles projected up higher than her ears. Lovely as they were, he suddenly wished she did not have them, for they forced him to recognize that all of them were changed as much as she was, just as far from the humans they had once been. All of them had changed, and all were just as much at risk from the lack of Silver as the dragons were. He thought of Greft, dying of his changes on the journey to Kelsingra. Did such an end await all of them?

‘You look so solemn,’ Thymara said as she caught up with him.

‘I’m a bit worried about Rapskal,’ he said, and it was not a lie even if it was not the immediate truth.

They crested the last hill and looked down at the docks. Sintara and Baliper were wheeling overhead and Spit had flown up to join them. Rapskal circled them on his scarlet dragon. His shouted victory song reached them as a thin whisper on the wind.

Oars powered the two ships that were coming in to dock. They were long and lean, low to the water. Their masts were stripped of sail and folded down to the deck. The oars rose and fell in an uncertain rhythm that spoke either of weariness or clumsy oarsmen. ‘Catch a line!’ Big Eider’s cry rang out as he threw a coiled line to them, and the men who scrambled to catch it were certainly not sailors. They caught it, and then stood staring at it until one of the oarsmen leapt up to take it from their hands.

The rest of the docking proceeded with similar awkwardness. Some of the men on the ships were doing nothing to help, only standing and shouting that they were innocent men, honest Traders from Bingtown, and that they had done nothing to hurt a dragon or to deserve to have their ship stolen from them. Tats and Thymara halted where they stood to watch the spectacle. As the second ship ran into the first, tangling oars and breaking several, the shouts and curses rose in a storm. Other lines were thrown, and a man stood on the raised deck of one of the ships screaming orders that either his crew ignored or did not know how to obey. On the other, a reasonably competent crew ran about frantically trying to protect their vessel.

‘This is bad,’ Tats said in a low voice. ‘Fente told me the dragons conquered evil warriors. They don’t look like warriors. They look like merchants.’

‘Trouble will come of this,’ Thymara agreed.

Slowly they moved down the hill to see what the river had brought them.

‘Like a courting bird,’ Big Eider said, and Leftrin growled in agreement. It had driven him nearly mad to see ships handled so. They might not be alive, but they were gracious, well-built craft and they did not deserve to be run into pilings nor each other in the course of a simple docking. As they were finally being secured to the dock that he did not completely trust for one ship, let alone three, Heeby landed Rapskal nearby. The young Elderling slid down from the scarlet dragon’s shoulder, patted her, and suggested she ‘Go take a long soak, my lovely, and I’ll be along to scrub you down soon.’ As his darling lumbered off, Rapskal promenaded down to the tethered ships. He stood, looking at his prizes and nodding to himself, prompting Big Eider’s remark.

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.