City of Dragons

The boy shifted restlessly and glanced away into the darkness. “I’ll get a beating if anyone finds out I was down here looking at you. I bring you anything, I’ll get a double beating. Besides, I couldn’t even get a hot drink for myself, let alone take it out of the galley. Me and the other deck boys, we aren’t allowed in the galley to eat.” The boy scratched his dirty cheek. He turned away from Selden. “Sorry,” he added, almost as an afterthought. The lantern swung and cast stretched shadows as he walked away.

“Please,” Selden said, and then “PLEASE!” he shouted. At his cry, the boy took flight, the lantern jogging wildly as he ran. The darkness around him deepened and then was absolute again. The boy was gone. With him went all hope. He wouldn’t be back. The threat of a beating was stronger than the lure of a tale. “I should have said I was a demon,” he muttered to himself. “I should have threatened to curse him if he didn’t bring me a blanket and hot food.”

Curses and threats. That was what worked in the world.

Nothing was going well for Leftrin. People were too curious, asking him too many questions at every turn. Merchants wanted to know why he was using the Khuprus line of credit so freely. He’d replied that they were advancing into a partnership, one he could not yet divulge. He didn’t even want to say that much, but he needed it to be plausible for Reyn and his sister to have signed off on such massive purchases of supplies. Tillamon was bearing the brunt of the gossip seekers and coping well with it. She put her veil to its maximum use, ignoring people as she chose. The Khuprus interest in the mysterious “expedition” had fueled no less than three other offers of financial backing from young Traders. Leftrin had feigned great reluctance as he turned them down, saying that Tillamon had specified that their arrangement was to be both exclusive and private. He regretted that now, for it seemed to have ignited curiosity to a feverish pitch. Two Traders had come in hastily from Trehaug and urgently requested meetings with him. He had scheduled them for a date three days hence, knowing full well he planned to be gone by then.

Worse were the messages from the Council. They had begun to arrive as soon as the winter light filtered down and proclaimed day on the Rain Wild River. The first one had suggested a meeting to discuss “unclear” language in the original contract and the “clear and true intent” of the contract as “revealed by its general purpose.” He knew what that meant. Given a chance, they’d reinterpret the contract to their great benefit and try to frighten him into complying. They wanted his charts of the river, and they wanted to know what he had found up there. They’d get neither from him.

As the day crept by and he continued to load the ship, more queries and demands were piling up. Why was he in such a hurry for these goods? In some cases, he’d paid double to have goods ordered by other customers diverted to his ship. It was exciting animosity as well as curiosity. His own relatives were pestering him with queries, especially his brother. Why hadn’t he come to visit? Why hadn’t Skelly come to spend time with her parents? She should visit her fiancé, too. She was getting close to an age at which Leftrin would have to give her up as a deckhand for a time so that she could be married, and then, after a year or so, she and her new husband would be expected to move aboard Tarman and begin to learn its routines, so that when Skelly inherited the liveship, her husband would be competent enough to help her run it. He hadn’t replied to that one. A letter was no way to tell his brother that once Alise could free herself from Hest, he intended to marry her and possibly get his own heir. Even less did he want to tell his brother and his sister-in-law that their daughter was currently very infatuated with a dragon keeper who was rapidly turning into an Elderling, and that she had spoken of her hopes that her fiancé would break off their marriage agreement when he learned that she was no longer the first heir to the ship, because then she would be free to marry Alum. When he asked her, of course.

Just thinking of that whole tangle made Leftrin’s head ache. And freight was coming aboard too fast, making Hennesey and Swarge quarrelsome about the best way to stow it. When consecutive notices arrived from the Council commanding that he come to meet with them, and then one forbidding him from departing without the Council’s consent as he “may have in his possession documents and charts that are the rightful possessions of the Cassarick Traders’ Council,” he once again set his teeth and dismissed the courier with no reply. When yet another letter arrived for him, this one from the Trehaug Council, asserting that he had no right to turn any documents over to the Cassarick Council until a representative from Trehaug was there to be sure that its interests would be fairly considered, he tipped the courier heavily, tossed the missive over the side, and went to Hennesey.