Blood of Dragons (56 page)

A bucket of Silver, drawn from the well, waited on the paving stones before her. ‘I suppose I just put on the gauntlets, dip my hands into the Silver and then …' She looked all around at the others. ‘Has anyone ever found a memory of anyone working Silver? Seen them at work?'

‘I've seen people wearing Silver gloves, still gleaming. But I didn't really see what they were doing. They were crouched down by a statue, looking at the base of it and talking as I walked by. In the memory,' Alum added, as if to explain.

Thymara slowly began to draw on a gauntlet.

‘What if it leaks?' Tats demanded wildly. ‘What if it soaks through? What if there's something about this that we don't understand, something that hurts her or kills her?'

She spoke patiently. ‘I tested them earlier. In water. Not a drop got in.'

‘But that's not water in that bucket!'

‘I know.' She had both gauntlets on now. She flexed her hands and felt the pull of the supple leather against them. For only a moment, she considered that she was wearing someone else's skin on her hands. A dragon's, certainly, but had not he or she thought and spoken just as clearly as a human? How would she feel about someone else wearing her skin as gloves? She stared at her green-gloved hands for a moment and then shook her head. ‘I'm going to try it,' she said, as if any of them had doubted it.

The Silver in the wooden bucket swirled sluggishly. No one had jostled it. It had not ceased its restless motion since Carson had slowly lowered the bucket into the stuff, poked it with a long stick to make it tip, and then gingerly hauled it up again. He had held it by a length of dry rope to allow every droplet of Silver to drip back into the well before setting it beside the well mouth on the paving stones. They had all gathered around it, to watch the slow undulation of the liquid within.

‘Is it possible it's actually alive?' Tats had asked.

No one had tried to answer. And no one had touched the bucket since, but still the stuff moved, coiling within itself, silver, white, grey, a fine thread of black, moving like liquid snakes tangled with one another.

Slowly, being very careful not to splash, Thymara pushed her right hand into the bucket of Silver. She went no more than fingertip deep and then drew her hands out. For a moment, the Silver clung smoothly. Then it began to pull away from the glove in droplets. She held her hand over the bucket and there was silence as they watched the Silver droplets fall.

‘Do you feel anything?' Tats asked tensely.

‘Just heaviness. Like a wet glove.'

She moved her fingers, flexing them slowly, and the droplets ceased falling and spread evenly over the gauntlet. Thymara caught her breath as they began to spread upward, toward the cuff, but they stopped at the wrist, forming a perfectly straight line there.

‘Umh.' Carson had squatted down beside her to stare at her hand over the bucket. ‘Wonder how they made it do that? Stop instead of spreading all the way up to your arm.'

‘Enough experiment for one day?' Tats suggested.

Thymara shook her head slowly. ‘Stand back. I'm going to move over and touch the wood.'

As she slowly straightened and then took the two steps toward the completed well cover, the gathered observers moved in a circle around her. She turned her hand slowly as she went, palm up, then back up, then palm up, keeping the Silver evenly spread.

‘Is that something you remember to do?' Carson asked her, and she replied tightly, ‘I don't know. It just feels like the way to do it. To keep it from dripping off.'

She squatted by the well cap and set her laden glove on it. ‘What do I do?' she wondered aloud. Then, before anyone could reply, she drew her hand along the wood, stroking the rough plank with the grain. ‘I'm pressing on it, trying to make it smooth,' she said.

All were silent, watching. As she trailed her fingers on the board, the Silver drained from the glove onto the wood until her hand was gloved only in green dragon leather. The Silver was smooth on the wood in the wake of her hand, but only for a moment. Then it began to gather itself up into tiny balls on top of the plank.

‘I knew it couldn't be that easy,' Tats muttered.

Thymara scowled at it. She ran her glove over it again, and again the Silver coated the wood obediently. She stopped and watched it gather itself up into tiny balls like droplets of dew. ‘Why does it do that?'

‘No one told it not to,' Alum observed.

Thymara gave him a sharp look. She ran her fingertips across the Silver and wood again. ‘Be flat, be smooth.'

The Silver scattered before her touch, ran in erratic circles behind it. For a moment, it smoothed itself into an even sheen over the wood, and then bubbled up again. Harrikin crouched down beside her. ‘May I try?' he asked hoarsely. ‘With the other glove?'

‘You remember something?' Carson asked him, almost sharply.

‘Maybe it's like the dragons. Maybe you don't tell it what to do. Maybe it needs to be persuaded.'

Thymara held out her free hand, and he carefully drew the glove from it and slid it onto his hand. It fitted badly on his larger hand and the fingertips were empty and flopping. Thymara lifted her hand away and his took its place. He glanced at the others self-consciously, then visibly focused himself. ‘Be smooth and lovely. Bring your beauty to the wood. Shine and gleam. Be as strong and smooth as the face of a placid lake, be strong as polished metal.'

Unevenly, his fingers trailed along the wood, and unevenly did the Silver obey him. Narrow streaks of gleaming Silver-polished wood followed his touch. Where he had not touched it, the Silver darted about, formed itself into balls and danced nervously, uncertainly on the surface of the rough plank.

‘Try it again,' Carson suggested, his voice barely a whisper.

Alum looked up at him and then back at the wood. ‘Look how narrow the stripes are. It would take forever to …'

‘Don't say it!' Carson interrupted him hoarsely. ‘Don't suggest anything we don't want it to do.' He stared at the beaded dancing Silver as if it were game he were stalking.

‘Add your beauty to the wood; give it your gleaming strength.' Harrikin had gone a bit pink on his cheeks but he spoke on. ‘Like a shimmering, gleaming pond of shimmering, gleaming, beautiful, still water. Please be like that. Let me see how you can make your beauty part of the lovely, pretty, smooth wood.' He looked up suddenly at the others, his eyes desperate. A thin line of polished wood was following his awkward touch.

‘You are like the moon's shimmering path on a still pond,' Thymara suggested. Harrikin nodded tersely.

‘Let your beauty on the wood be like the moon's shimmering path on a still pond.' He spoke to the Silver, and another narrow streak of gleam joined the first.

‘The glorious strength of molten iron running in a steaming stream,' Carson muttered.

Harrikin nodded and spoke again to the Silver. ‘Add to this wood your glorious strength, like the smooth running of molten iron in a steaming stream.'

‘I've got one!' Alum said softly. ‘The beauty of a woman's hair, unbound and falling down her bare back before her lover's eyes.'

‘Lucky for you that Leftrin's not here,' Carson muttered. Alum flushed pink under his pale-green scaling.

Thread by thread, compliment after compliment, the Silver was persuaded to merge with the wood. When the final dancing drop was stilled, Harrikin rocked back on his heels. He heaved a sigh. He drew the glove off slowly and offered it back to Thymara. She took it carefully. He stood, flexing his back and shaking his head. ‘Alum was right. Look how long it took to persuade one gloveful of Silver to bond with the wood. There it is, a stripe that's barely a finger wide. It's going to take days to finish that well cap!'

‘Seems likely,' Carson replied thoughtfully.

‘And it seems likely that if we do it, it may last a hundred years,' Tats added.

Thymara was gazing around at the city. ‘How did they do it? How did they raise it all?'

‘Very slowly,' Carson replied. ‘And not with magic alone.' He seemed to be thinking something through and then he added, ‘I don't think they used it because magic made it easier or quicker. I think they used it to do things that otherwise couldn't be done. Then the effort would be worth it.' He scratched his chin thoughtfully. ‘Obviously, we've a lot left to learn.'

Malta looked up from perusing the empty beds of soil. Through the glass panels overhead, she could see the sun venturing toward the horizon. Another day gone, and no word from the dragons or any of the keepers. How many times a day did she stop whatever she was doing and scan the skies? The rooftop hothouse offered her a view in every direction, but the skies remained stubbornly empty of dragons.

‘I'm sorry,' Alum said as he shut the glass door behind him. ‘Am I disturbing you?'

‘Not really,' Malta said. ‘As long as we speak softly. Phron is sleeping.' She nodded toward him. She had spread an Elderling robe out on one of the hothouse benches and put him down there. He looked a different child. He was still not the chubby pink infant she had dreamed of cradling, but she suspected that, for an Elderling's child, he was very healthy. Tintaglia's influence was more obvious on him than it was on her or Reyn. His scaling was a decided blue, as were his eyes. His body shape was more lithe than rounded. She did not care. His eyes were bright; he slept deeply, ate eagerly, and stared at her with wide trusting eyes while he nursed. Every day he grew, and every day she wished his father were there to see it.

The tall youth advanced hesitantly and then perched on the edge of a bed. ‘I thought we didn't have any seeds to plant?' Alum studied the soil Malta had loosened in one of the long, narrow beds. She realized that, with Skelly gone with Tarman, he was probably as lost as she was.

‘We don't,' she admitted. ‘But it's something we used to do in our gardens back in Bingtown in springtime. We loosened the soil in the beds and renewed it before the seeds were planted or the young plants set out.'

Alum tilted his head at her. ‘But you were a Trader's daughter. Surely you had servants for that sort of work?'

‘We did,' she admitted easily. ‘But my grandmother spent time in her own hothouses when I was very small. And by the time I was older, we no longer had servants, and we were growing not flowers but vegetables for the table. I admit I did as little of the dirty work as I could; I had a horror of ruining my hands then and I could not understand the pleasure my grandmother took in nurturing growing things. Now, I think, I understand her better. And so I ready seedbeds even when we don't have seeds yet.'

Alum idly stirred the soil with a long-fingered, silvery-green hand. ‘I thought all Trader-born were wealthy.'

‘Some are. Others, less so. But wealth doesn't mean idleness. Look at Leftrin. Or Skelly.' She suspected she knew why he had sought her out. She'd lead him right to it, then.

‘Oh, yes,' he agreed. ‘She works, and she works hard. For years now, she's been working toward a dream. Taking over the family liveship when Leftrin … when he's finished with it.'

‘When he dies,' Malta said easily. ‘When he goes, he'll die on the deck of his ship, Alum. And everything he was and all he knew of the river and the ways of Tarman will go back into the liveship. It's how it's done. And it's important that there is someone there who is ready and willing to take over the captaining of the ship.'

‘I know,' he replied quietly. ‘We've talked about it.' He fell silent.

Malta waited. It was coming.

‘This time, when she's in Trehaug, she promised she'd talk to her family, with or without Leftrin. She's going to tell them that Leftrin and Alise want to get married and maybe have a child, and so she wouldn't be his heir any more. To see if she can break her engagement to that Rof fellow that her family promised her to. She thinks that he won't want to marry her if it's not certain that she'll inherit.'

‘And then what?' Malta prodded him gently when he fell silent.

‘She'd come back here, to me.' He sounded confident of that part.

‘And then?'

‘That's the hard part. I'm an Elderling. Ranculos says I'm going to live a long, long time. Hundreds of years, perhaps.'

‘And she isn't,' Malta said ruthlessly.

‘No. Not unless Arbuc will turn her into an Elderling, too. It must be possible! Tintaglia has you and Reyn and now Phron. So, if he wanted to, he could make her an Elderling, too. Then we both could have a long life. Together.'

‘I suppose he could. I still don't understand everything about it. But I know that he would have to want to do it.' She watched Alum's face and added, ‘And she would have to desire it, also.'

‘She says she'd feel disloyal to Tarman. That in some ways, the liveship is her dragon.'

She knew what he would next ask her. She wasn't surprised when he said, ‘You came from a liveship family. You chose Reyn over your family ship. Reyn and Tintaglia. Could you talk to her for me? Tell her there's nothing wrong with choosing her own happiness?'

He was so earnest. His eyes were so hopefully fixed on her that she hated to disappoint him. But, ‘It wasn't that simple, Alum. I did not have a close bond with my family's ship. Truth to tell, I had little interest in Vivacia. I thought my aunt or my brother would inherit her—'

‘But Selden became Tintaglia's as well. And Skelly told me that Althea chose Paragon, not her own family ship. So it doesn't always happen that a liveship trader stays with her own liveship!'

Malta sighed. ‘It was very complicated, Alum. And some of us did not have as much of a say in what we “chose” as you might think. Tintaglia never asked me or Reyn if we wanted to be her Elderlings. She took us. Nor did my elder brother Wintrow want to be bonded to a liveship. Yet he is, and content with it now, I imagine.'