City of Dragons: Volume Three of the Rain Wilds Chronicles

City of Dragons

Volume Three of the Rain Wilds Chronicles

Robin Hobb

Dedication

To the Little Red Hen

Contents

Homeward Bound

Cast of Characters

THE RAIN WILDS CHRONICLES

KEEPERS AND DRAGONS

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

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

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

ICEFYRE: An ancient black dragon, once entrapped in ice until freed by human intervention (also appears in
Fool’s Fate
).

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. Partnered with Davvie.

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.

SYLVE: The youngest of the keepers but mature and thoughtful for her age. Linked with Harrikin. Her dragon is the golden male MERCOR.

THYMARA: Sixteen years old; has black claws instead of nails and is at home in the trees. Good hunting skills. Her dragon is a blue queen, SINTARA.

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.

TINTAGLIA: An adult queen dragon, she assisted serpents to journey up the river to cocoon. It has been years since she has been seen in the Rain Wilds. Currently paired with ICEFYRE, an ancient black dragon.

WARKEN: A tall, long-limbed keeper who lost his life on the journey upriver. His dragon, BALIPER, a scarlet male, has not chosen a new keeper.

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. Now involved with Leftrin.

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

SEDRIC MELDAR: Secretary and former lover to Hest Finbok, and friends with Alise since childhood. Bonded with the copper queen dragon RELPDA. Partnered with Carson Lupskip.

REDDING: Hest’s current paramour and Sedric’s replacement. Greedy Bingtown Trader stock.

TRADER FINBOK: Hest’s father, a very successful Bington Trader. Married to Sealia Finbok.

THE CREW OF THE
TARMAN

BELLIN: Deckhand. Married to Swarge.

BIG EIDER: Deckhand. A large, powerful man of simple thoughts.

CARSON LUPSKIP: Hunter for the expedition. Leftrin’s old friend. Keeper of SPIT, a small, temperamental, and dangerous silver dragon. Partnered with Sedric.

DAVVIE: Apprentice hunter to Carson Lupskip. About fifteen years old. Bonded to KALO, the largest blue-black dragon, after the death of Greft, Kalo’s previous keeper. Partnered with Lecter.

GRIGSBY: Ship’s cat. Orange and obnoxious.

HENNESEY: First mate on the
Tarman
and something of a ladies’ man.

JESS: Hired hunter for the expedition and traitor. Lost his life on the journey upriver.

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

SKELLY: Deckhand. Leftrin’s niece and presumed heir. Infatuated with Alum but has a fiancé in Trehaug.

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

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 (also appears in the Liveship Traders trilogy).

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

BRASHEN TRELL: Captain of the
Paragon
out of Bingtown (also appears in the Liveship Traders trilogy).

CHASSIM: Daughter of the Duke of Chalced. Widowed several times and still part of the Duke’s household.

DETOZI: Keeper of the messenger birds at Trehaug. Engaged to Erek.

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

ELLIK: Chancellor to the Duke of Chalced, and his “sword arm.”

EREK: Keeper of the messenger birds at Bingtown.

JANI KHUPRUS: Rain Wild Trader and mother of Reyn Khuprus and Tillamon.

KIM: Keeper of the Birds, Cassarick. A Tattooed, a former slave who came to the Rain Wilds seeking a better life.

MALTA KHUPRUS: The Elderling “queen,” resides in Trehaug. Married to Reyn Khuprus. Changed to an Elderling by the dragon Tintaglia (also appears in the Liveship Traders trilogy).

PARAGON: A liveship. Helped escort the sea serpents up the river to the cocooning grounds. Not completely stable (also appears in
Mad Ship
).

REYN KHUPRUS: Younger son of a powerful Rain Wild Trader family. Changed to an Elderling by the dragon Tintaglia. Married to Malta (also appears in the Liveship Traders trilogy).

SELDEN VESTRIT: A young Elderling; Malta’s brother and Althea’s nephew. Missing for some time after setting out on a mission to search for other surviving dragons (also appears in the Liveship Traders trilogy).

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

THE CHALCEDEAN: Hest’s nemesis. A Chalcedean nobleman, willing to do anything to obtain dragon parts for the Duke.

TILLAMON: Sister to Reyn, heavily marked by the Rain Wilds. Older than Reyn; unwed and likely to remain so.

Prologue

TINTAGLIA AND ICEFYRE

S
he rode the air currents easily, her legs sleeked tight against her body, her wings spread wide. On the undulating desert sands below, her rippling shadow showed her as a serpentine creature with batlike wings and a long, finned tail. Tintaglia thrummed deep in her throat, a purr of pleasure in the day. They had hunted at dawn and hunted well. They had made their separate kills, as they always did, and spent the morning in feasting and then sleep. Now, smeared still with the blood and offal of the hunt, the two dragons had another goal in mind.

Ahead and slightly below her, Icefyre was a gleaming black shape. His long body flexed as he shifted his weight to catch and ride the wind. His torso was thicker and heavier than hers, his body longer. Her featherlike scaling glittered a scintillating blue, but he was an even black all over. His long encasement in ice had taken a toll on his body, one that was taking years to heal. His larger wings still had rents in the heavy webbing between the finger ribs. The smaller injuries to his body were long gone, but the tears in his wings would knit more slowly, and the welted scars of their healing would always be visible.
Unlike her own azure perfection.
Out of the corners of her eyes, Tintaglia admired her glittering wings.

As if he sensed her lack of attention to him, Icefyre banked abruptly and began his circling descent. She knew their destination. Not too far away a rocky ridge erupted above the sand. Stunted trees and gray-green brush populated its jagged edges and rough gullies. Just before the brushy ridge was a hidden oasis, in a wide, sandy basin, surrounded by a scatter of trees. The water rose from the depths of the earth to form a wide, still pool. Even in winter, the depression cupped the day’s warmth. They would spend their early afternoon soaking in the sun-warmed waters of the oasis to cleanse the blood from their hides and then rolling luxuriantly in the rough sand to polish their scales. They knew the spot well. They varied their hunting grounds over a wide range, but every ten days or so, Icefyre led them back here. He claimed it was a place he remembered from his distant youth.

Once, there had been a colony of Elderlings here that had tended the visiting dragons. Of their white stone buildings and carefully nurtured vineyards, nothing remained. The encroaching desert had devoured their settlement, but the oasis remained. Tintaglia would have preferred to fly much farther south, to the red sand deserts where winter never came, but Icefyre had refused. She, suspecting that he lacked the stamina for such a flight, had thought more than once of leaving him and going alone. But the terrible isolation of her long imprisonment in her cocoon had left its mark on her. Dragon companionship, even crotchety, critical companionship, was preferable to isolation.

Icefyre flew low now, nearly skimming the baked sand. His wings moved in sporadic, powerful beats that drove his glide and stirred the sand. Tintaglia followed, emulating him as she honed her own flying skills. There was much she did not care for in her mate, but he was truly a lord of the air.

They followed the contours of the land. She knew his plan. Their glide would carry them up to the lip of the basin, and then down in a wild slide that paralleled the slope of the dunes. It would end with both of them splashing, wings still spread, into the still, sun-warmed waters.

They were halfway down the slope when the sand around the upper edges of the basin erupted. Canvas coverings were flung aside and archers rose in ranks. A phalanx of arrows flew toward them. As the first wave of missiles rattled bruisingly off her wings and flanks, a second arced toward them. They were too close to the ground to batter their way to altitude again. Icefyre skimmed and then slewed around as he hit the shallow waters of the pool. Tintaglia was too close behind him to stop or change her path. She crashed into him and as their wings and legs tangled in the warm shallow water, spearmen rose from their camouflaged nests and came at them like an army of attacking ants. Behind them more ranks of men rose and surged forward with weighted nets of stout rope and chain.

Heedless of how he might injure her, Icefyre fought free of Tintaglia. He splashed from the shallow pool and charged into the men, trampling her into the water as he went. Some of the pike men ran; he crushed others under his powerful hind feet, then spun, and with a lash of his long tail knocked down a score of others. Dazed, mired in the water, she saw him work his throat and then open wide his mouth. Behind his rows of gleaming white pointed teeth, she glimpsed the scarlet and orange of Icefyre’s poison sacs. He spun toward his attackers, and his hissing roar carried with it a scarlet mist of venom. As the cloud enveloped the men before him, their screams rose to the blue cup of sky.

The acid ate them. Armor of leather or metal slowed but did not stop it. The droplets fell from the air to the earth, incidentally passing through human bodies on the way. Skin, flesh, bone, and gut were holed by the passing venom. It hissed as it struck the sand. Some men died quickly, but most did not.

Tintaglia had stared too long. A net thudded over her. At every junction of knot, the ropes had been weighted with dangling lumps of lead. Chains, some fine, some heavy, and some fitted with barbed hooks, were woven throughout the net. It trapped and tangled her wings, and when she clawed at it with her front legs, it wrapped them as well. She roared her fury and felt her own poison sacs swell as spearmen waded out into the shallow waters of the pond. She caught a glimpse of archers beginning a stumbling charge down the sandy slopes, arrows nocked to their bows. She jerked as a spear found a vulnerable spot between the scales behind her front leg, in the tender place between leg and chest. It did not penetrate deeply, but Tintaglia had never been stabbed with anything before. She turned, roaring out her pain and anger, and her venom misted out with her cry. The spearmen fell back in horror. As the venom settled on the net, the lines and chains weakened and then gave way to her struggles. Tangles of it still wrapped her, but she could move. Fury enveloped her. Humans dared to attack dragons?

Tintaglia waded out of the water and into the midst of them, slashing with her claws and lashing with her tail, and every scream of rage she emitted carried a wave of acid toxin with it. Soon the shrill shrieks of dying humans filled the air. She did not need to spare a glance for Icefyre: she could hear the carnage he was wreaking.

Arrows rattled off her body and thudded painfully against her entangled wings. She flapped them, tumbling a dozen men with them as she flung the last bits of netting free. But her opened wings had bared her vulnerability. She felt the hot bite of an arrow beneath her left wing. She clapped her wings closed, realizing too late that the humans had been trying to provoke her into opening them to expose the more tender flesh beneath. But closing her wing only pushed the arrow shaft in deeper. Tintaglia roared her pain and spun again, lashing with her tail. She caught a brief glimpse of Icefyre, a human clutched in his jaws and raised aloft. The dying man’s shriek rose above the other battle sounds as the dragon severed his body into two pieces. Cries of horror from more distant ranks of humans were sweet to hear, and she suddenly understood what her mate was doing.

His thought reached her.
Terror is as important as killing. They must be taught never even to think of attacking dragons. A few we must allow to escape, to carry the tale home.
Grim and terse, he added,
But only a few!

A few,
she agreed and waded out of the waters and in among the men who had gathered to slay her, batting them aside with her clawed front feet as easily as a cat would bat at a string. She snapped at them, clipping legs from bodies, arms from shoulders, maiming rather than killing quickly. She lifted her head high, and then flung it forward, hissing out a breath laden with a mist of acid venom. The human wall before her melted into bones and blood.

A
s afternoon was venturing toward evening, the two dragons flew a final circle around the basin of land. A straggle of warriors fled like disoriented ants toward the scrub-covered ridge.
Let them spread the word!
Icefyre suggested.
We should return to the oasis before their meat begins to spoil.
He banked his wings and turned away from their lazy pursuit, and Tintaglia followed.

His suggestion was welcome. The spear had fallen out of the hole it had made in her hide, but the arrow on the other side had not. She had not meant to drive it deeper into herself. In a quiet moment after the first slaughter was over and while the mobile survivors were fleeing, she had tried to pull it out. Instead, it had broken off, and the remaining nub of wood that protruded was too short for her to grip with her teeth. Clawing at it had only pushed it deeper. She felt the unwelcome intrusion of the wooden shaft and metal head into her flesh with every beat of her wings.

How many humans fought against us?
she wondered.

Hundreds. But what does it matter? They did not kill us, and those we allow to escape will carry the word to their kind that they were foolish to try.

Why did they attack us?

The attack did not fit with her experience with humans. The people she had encountered had always been in awe of her, more inclined to serve her than attack her. Some had squeaked defiance, but she had found ways to bring them into line. She had fought humans before, but not because they had ambushed her. She had killed Chalcedeans only because she had chosen to ally herself with the Bingtown Traders, killing their enemies in return for their help for the serpents that would, after metamorphosis, become dragons. Could this attack be related to that? It seemed unlikely. Humans were so short-lived. Were they capable of such reasoned vengeance?

Icefyre’s rationale was simpler.
They attack us because they are humans and we are dragons. Most humans hate us. Some pretend awe and bring gifts, but behind their flattery and cowering, there is hatred for us. Never forget that. In this part of the world, humans have hated us for a very long time. Once, before I emerged as a dragon, the humans here sought to destroy all dragons. They fed slow poison to their own herds to try to kill us. They captured and tortured our Elderling servants in the hope of finding secrets they might use against us. They destroyed our strongholds and the stone pillars by which our servants traveled in an attempt to weaken us. Those few of us they managed to kill, they butchered like cattle, using the flesh and blood of our bodies as medicines and tonics for their feeble bodies.

I do not recall any of this
. Tintaglia searched her ancestral memories in vain.

There is much you do not seem to recall. I think you were encased too long. It damaged your mind and left you ignorant of many things.

She felt a spark of anger toward him. Icefyre often said such things to her. Usually after she had implied that his long entrapment in the ice had made him partially mad. She stifled her anger for now; she needed to know more. And the arrow in her side was pinching her.

What happened? Back then?

Icefyre turned his head on its long neck and gave her a baleful look.
What happened? We destroyed them, of course. Humans are nuisance enough without letting them think they can defy our wishes.

They were nearing the spring at the heart of the oasis. Human carcasses littered the sand; swooping down into the basin was like descending into a pool of blood scent. In the late afternoon sun the corpses were starting to bake into carrion.

After we feed, we will leave here and find a cleaner place to sleep,
the black dragon announced.
We will have to abandon this spot for a time, until jackals and ravens clean it for us. There is too much meat here for us to consume at one time, and humans spoil quickly.

He skidded to a landing in the pool where a few human bodies still bobbed. Tintaglia followed him in. The waves of their impact were still brushing the shore when he picked a body out of the water.
Avoid the ones encased in metal,
he counseled her.
The archers will be your best choices. Usually they just wear leather.

He sheared the body into two and caught one part of it before it could fall into the water. He tossed the half carcass up into the air, then caught it in his jaws, tipping his head back to swallow it. The other half fell with a splash and sank in the pool. Icefyre selected another one, engulfing it headfirst, crushing the body with his powerful jaws before swallowing it whole.

Tintaglia waded out of the contaminated water and stood watching him.

They will spoil rapidly. You should eat now.

I’ve never eaten a human.
She felt a mild revulsion. She’d killed many humans but eaten none of them. That seemed odd now.

She thought of the humans she had befriended: Reyn and Malta and her young singer Selden. She’d set them on the path to being Elderlings and not given much thought to them since then.
Selden
. She felt a spark of pleasure at her memory of him. Now there was a singer who knew how to praise a dragon. Those three humans she had chosen as her own and made them her Elderlings. So they were different, perhaps. If she happened to be near one of them when they died, she’d eat the body, to preserve their memories.