The Mad Ship (Liveship Traders, #2)

by Robin Hobb

but above all was the ship’s amazed and furious cry. ‘I know you!’ Paragon roared. ‘I know you!’

Then from the bow came the wild cry that chilled Althea’s blood. ‘I knew you!’ the Paragon bellowed. ‘And you knew me. By your poisons, I know myself!’ His wild laughter rose on the wind. ‘Blood is memory!’

She felt a faded smile come to her scratched face. She turned to the former slave at her side and took her hand. ‘Well. A quiet moment at last. Shall we have a cup of tea?’ she asked her friend.

‘Blood is memory,’ he had proclaimed. ‘You can spill it, you can devour it, but you can never erase what it holds. Blood is memory.’

still held her hand. Without warning, he drew her closer. When he leaned down to kiss her, she did not step away. She lifted her face to his. His mouth was gentle on hers. She closed her eyes to it and refused to be wise. She refused to think at all.

‘Peeking at keyholes isn’t right,’ she told him severely as she passed. ‘Neither is kiss’n’ ther cap’n,’ he replied insolently.

But when last I was in these waters, I slipped through them, swift and sleek. I was new and young. I began here, Wintrow. I began here, not once, but many times.’ She was troubled. He reached for her, and felt the swift shadows of memories so old she could not grasp them. They flitted away from her, soft-edged and elusive as the sunlight patterns under his eyelids. The glimpses he caught disturbed him. He knew them as well as she did. Wings against the sun. Sliding deep-water images framed in green light.

‘How could you begin many times?’ he asked her gently. She pushed her glossy black hair back from her face and pressed her temples as if it would ease her. ‘It’s all a circle. A circle that turns. Nothing stops, nothing is lost, and it all goes spiralling on. Like thread on a spool, Wintrow. Around and around it goes, layering on in circles, and yet it is always the same piece of thread.’

‘It eases me, nonetheless. We all thank you.’ ‘We?’ He mouthed the word, but did not think that was how she shared his thought. ‘My kind. I am the last who can save them. I am She Who Remembers. Even now, it may be too late. But if I am not too late, and I can save them, we will remember you. Always. Take comfort in that, creature of a few breaths.’ ‘Wintrow. My name is Wintrow.’

The creature she beheld had not been there a moment before. She was sure of it. There was nowhere it could have concealed itself, and yet now suddenly it was there. The erect part of it was as tall as Kennit, and a heavier slug-like body trailed behind it. As she stared at it, it flung out flexible limbs from its upper body. They were impossibly graceful, bonelessly unfolding, with outstretched long fingered hands at the end. The fingers were webbed. Its body was grey-green and gleamed damply where it was not covered by a pale yellow cloak. Its flat eyes glared at them menacingly.

Wintrow’s body rose and fell with the waves that washed past him. Next to him was an immense greenish-yellow thing. From the way it wallowed back and forth in the water, it was alive. Suddenly it lifted a huge head, and her eyes resolved the contorted shape. It was a stranded sea serpent.

‘Ours!’ ‘She is our goddess!’

‘She must escape. Don’t let them trap her. She Who Remembers must go to her kind!’

Wintrow uttered a single word with obsessive hatred. ‘Abomination! Abomination!’

Wintrow wished they would both shut up and leave him alone. He remembered so much. He remembered his destiny, as well as recalling all the lives he had led before this one. Suddenly it was all so clear. He had been hatched to be the repository of all memory for all serpents. He would contain them until such time as each was ready to come to her, and with a touch renew their rightful heritage. He would be the one to guide them home, to the place far up the river where they would find both safety and the special soil from which to create their cases. There would be guides awaiting them at the river, to protect them on their journey upstream and to stand watch over them as they awaited their metamorphosis. It had been so long, but she was free now, and all would be well.

That most ancient of magics, the binding of a man by the use of his name, gripped him.

You can’t have me and you can’t have my ship! By Sa, by El, by Eda, by the God of Fishes, by every god nameless and not, I swear you shall not have me nor mine!’ He held out his hands, his fingers like claws, as if he would grapple with the wind that defied them.

‘This was in my boot. When I changed. I think…it must have come from the Others’ Island.’ She held out her hands towards him. Cupped in them, no bigger than a quail’s egg, was a baby. The infant was curled tight in sleep, eyes closed, lashes on his cheeks, tiny round knees drawn up to his chest. Whatever it was carved from mimicked perfectly the fresh pink of young flesh. A tiny serpentine tail wrapped its body. ‘What does it mean?’ Etta demanded, her voice quavering. Kennit touched it with a fingertip, his weathered skin dark against it. ‘I think we both know, don’t we?’ he asked her solemnly.

I like watching the fire birds spoon in the shallows of the river.’ He paused, then added boldly, ‘I like it that not everyone here is so worried all the time.’ He leaned even closer and added, ‘And I like the old city. I sneaked into it last night, with Wilee, after everyone else was asleep. It’s spooky. I loved it.’

As abruptly as a bird taking flight, Selden hopped off the divan and left the chamber. She shook her head as she looked after him. He had recovered so swiftly. More than recovered; he had suddenly become a person. Was that what parents meant when they said children grew up so fast? She felt almost sentimental about her annoying little brother. She wondered, wryly, if that meant she were growing up, too.

Water came from the sprawling system of rain catchers, for no one could drink much of the river water and hope to

Both her hands flew up to cover her mouth. In shock, she watched his shoulders shake. He was weeping. She spoke her astonished thought aloud. ‘I never heard a man say such words. I didn’t think one could.’ In one shattering instant, her basic concept of men was reordered. She didn’t have to hammer Reyn with words or break him with unflinching accusations. He could admit he was wrong. Not like my father, the traitor thought whispered. She refused to follow it.

Men were not at all what she had believed they were.

you want Mama to know about you and the thick boats?’

She groped her way down into the darkness. It smelled of damp and stagnant water. What was she doing? What was she thinking? She gritted her teeth and set her hand beside Selden’s. The result was astonishing. A sudden bar of light shot out from beneath her fingers. It ran the length of the tunnel in front of them before vanishing around a curve. Along the way, it arched over doorways. In some places, runes shone on it. She froze in astonishment.

Maybe she could just lie here until somebody else did something about it.

The music died away for a moment, then swirled back. This was another tune, but she knew it as well. She hummed with it a moment to prove she did, then a sudden chill shivered up her back. She recalled where she had heard this music before; it had been in the first dream that she had ever shared with Reyn. In the dream, she had walked with him in a silent city. Then he had brought her to a place where there was music, and light, and people talking. The music was the same; that was how she knew it.

Tall, elegant women with golden skin and improbable hair swept past her, chattering gaily to one another in a language she had once known.

‘Hello, Malta Vestrit,’ the dragon said to her. ‘So we meet at last. I knew you’d come to me.’

I will fly to the south and bring you back the flowers that never fade, the blossoms that cure your kind of any ill just by the breathing of their scent. I will fly to the north and bring you back the ice that is harder than any metal and never melts. I will show you how to make blades from it that can cut even stone. I will fly to the east and bring you back —’

‘There is a great door in the south wall. The Elderlings created art here, in this chamber. They made living sculptures of my kind, from the memory stone. Old men would carve them in this chamber, safe from wind and weather. Then they would die into them and the sculpture would briefly take on their lives.

They would live a brief time, and then their memories and false life would fade. There was a graveyard of them, back in the mountains. The Elderlings thought of it as art.

Males will quiver in the shadow, fearing their own deaths. We know that the only thing to be feared is the end of the race.’ The words rang oddly in Malta’s soul. Almost true, she whispered to herself. But she could not sort out the part of it that was false.

She saw the blocks of the walls being set in place, and she saw the workmen desperately bringing in the dragon cradles. They pulled them on ropes, trundling them along on rollers, for outside the sky had blackened and the earth was shaking and ash rained from the sky, swift and thick as a black snowfall.

‘Malta Vestrit. Do you remember? Do you remember how to open the door?’

She no longer listened to the exhausted complaints of her body. She lived now in a thousand different moments; why focus on the one where she was in pain?

‘Your masters assured us we would be safe here. That no one and nothing could find me here. What is the good of my hiding from assassins, only to be drowned in stinking mud?’ Malta blinked. The Elder phantasms faded, leaving the Satrap of Jamaillia scowling down at her. ‘Well, don’t just lie there. Get up and take us to your masters. They will feel my wrath.’ Companion Kekki had gone back into the chamber to snatch up a lantern. ‘She is useless,’ she declared to the Satrap. ‘Follow me. I think I know the way.’