‘Oh, sweet Sa!’ Captain Leftrin exclaimed, but the Silver soaked into Tarman as if his deck were a sponge, leaving not a trace. I felt a little shiver of pleasure run through him, but no more than that. The other kegs were being transported more carefully and as Kendry came upright, our deck didn’t slope. On the shore, people were shouting and pointing at Vivacia’s dragon as she tested her wings above the river.
Kendry was on his fourth cask when a small vessel from Trehaug came alongside Tarman. ‘Catch a line!’ the man in the bow shouted.
No one did.
A small red-faced woman with a thicket of dark curly hair stood up in the middle of the boat. ‘Last night, at the agreed-upon hour, a vote was taken. What you are doing is forbidden by a vote of the Bingtown Council. Their prohibition has been affirmed and duplicated by the Rain Wild Traders’ Council. You must cease immediately!’
‘What’s that?’ Leftrin shouted back at them. ‘Can you say that again?’ For as they spoke, a long silver dragon swept over us, trumpeting her joy.
‘Stop that immediately!’
‘Stop what?’
Her rowers were working hard to stay in place along the Tarman. It seemed as if each time they were almost close enough to catch hold of one of his anchor lines, our ship would sidle slightly away from them. She who had been Vivacia continued to sweep over us in circles that made us all duck from the wind of her wings and pushed the councilwoman’s small boat about as if it were a toy. By the time she shouted out at us, that we must not aid any ship in turning into a dragon, Kendry finished the last cask and tossed it casually into the air. Chance made it land with a splash beside the small boat, and the woman shouted in alarm and was barely caught by one of her rowers before she went over.
Captain Leftrin shook his head and made a mocking face. ‘Even a child would know better than to stand up in the middle of a rowing boat.’
‘You will be condemned for this!’ the woman shouted as her rowers pulled their oars and bore her away from us. ‘You will be fined for contempt of a lawful council ruling.’
No one was paying attention. Kendry, it turned out, was a very gaudy dragon, with stripes and spots of orange, pink and red on a black hide. His eyes were jade green. He was smaller than Vivacia, and as he rose into the sky he trilled rather than roared. He joined Vivacia over our heads. They sparred twice, there above us, and then both swiftly flew upriver.
Captain Leftrin looked around his deck at his surplus of crew. ‘Time to go,’ he announced. ‘Get those anchors up. Tarman wants to head for home.’
‘He’s done something to himself,’ Captain Leftrin muttered to Alise. Alise had been showing me that some sailor knots were the same ones my mother had used to crochet. We were sitting around the galley table when he came in out of the rain. He dripped across to the little galley stove, and made it hiss with rain spatter from his oilskins as he poured himself a mug of coffee.
‘Done something?’ Alise asked worriedly.
He shook his head. ‘We’re making good time,’ he abruptly announced to all of us. ‘Excellent time.’ He looked at her and added, ‘Better time than we’ve ever made since I’ve been captain.’ And then he stumped back out onto the rainy deck.
I must have looked worried. ‘Oh, don’t fret, dear,’ Alise assured me. ‘The ship is having a bit of a joke. They’ll sort it out, I’m sure.’
But Tarman’s ‘good time’ as we went up the river seemed slow indeed to me.
I learned three more tunes on the pipe. Spark and Per insisted I learn more knots. I surprised them with crochet. I could not manage the big lines on the ship; my hands were too small and I lacked the strength. But with very thin cord, Alise and I made tablemats. I spent a great deal of time with her in the galley, helping to make the meals, and in her stateroom listening to her stories of her girlhood in Bingtown. When we walked together on the deck, Captain Leftrin often watched us with a wistful expression.
At night, when the weather was fine, we slept on top of the deckhouse and looked up at the stars in the black sky. One evening when we had tied up to a sandy bank for the night, I went with Amber to find some tall reeds that were like cattails but different. She cut a dozen, and brought them back aboard and made several whistles from them, and Per joined me in learning to play. Their sound was not as fine as her wooden pipe, but we enjoyed them. Often we were banished to the stern of the barge while we practised.
I had other lessons with Beloved, in the small cabin Spark and I shared with him. Beloved spoke of dreams, and changes to my skin, of responsibility to the world, and to my own conscience. He told me tales of other White Prophets and how they had changed the world, sometimes with very small deeds. Despite myself, I enjoyed the stories. It was confusing. I was starting to like him, despite how I nursed my anger for him when I missed my father late at night.
His lessons cautioned me that great events often hinged on small ones. ‘Your father was the Unexpected Son. When I was young and dreamed of him, I saw always that the chances of him surviving boyhood were very small, let alone his chance of living through manhood. And so I came, all the way from Clerres, wending my way to Buckkeep Castle, to put myself in service to King Shrewd and wait and hope that I was right. The first time I saw him, he did not see me. He was just a little boy, trudging along behind the stern stablemaster. I looked down on them from my window in a tower and I knew him in that moment. And later that day, when a cart-driver thought to harass him, the boy stood him off without a word.
‘Oh, Bee, I put him through so much. It was not a kindness for me to find him and demand that he live through all sorts of beatings and abuse. Time after time I pulled him back from death’s door. He endured pain and privation, hardship and heartbreak. Much loneliness. But he changed the world. He made dragons real again.’
That was the day he put his face down in his hands, one gloved and one bared, and wept. After a time, I stood up and left him there. I had no more comfort for him than he did for me.
When we docked in Kelsingra it was so easy that Captain Leftrin was left cursing with amazement. We arrived in the middle of a sunny morning and the sky was full of dragons. Paragon’s dragons were there, already larger than when we had last seen them, and Vivacia and Kendry, as well as the red dragon from Clerres and the great blue one called Tintaglia. I saw no sign of the immense black dragon that had helped to flatten the castle.