CHAPTER FORTY — The Rain Wild River

THE MORNING AIR WAS COOL AND SOOTHING ON HER FACE. PARAGON MOVED easily with the flow of the river. As she looked at the new day, Althea could tell Semoy was on the helm. It was more because he enjoyed it than because his skill was needed. This stretch of river was as placid as Paragon's deck. Many of the crew had jumped ship in Bingtown. Others had stayed on as far as Trehaug, only to find new jobs there as laborers. When they had left Trehaug with little more than a skeleton crew, neither Brashen nor Althea had seen it as a real loss. It was going to be difficult enough to scrape together wages for those who remained. Their present errand was to return to Bingtown, where a load of stone awaited them. Althea suspected it was salvaged from destroyed New Trader holdings. It would be used to reinforce the bank where the dragons would eventually hatch. The dragon was adept at finding work for the liveships, and less than capable at finding pay for their crews.

Althea shook such dismal worries from her head. Doggedly she seized onto optimism. She could believe all would go well, as long as she didn't think too hard. She crossed the main deck and bounded up to the foredeck. "Morning!" she announced to the figurehead. She looked around, stretching. "Every day, I think these jungles cannot be greener. Every morning, I awake and find I am wrong."

Paragon didn't reply. But Amber spoke from over the side. "Spring," Amber agreed. "An amazing season."

Althea stepped up to the railing to look down at her. "You fall in this river, you're going to be sorry," she warned her. "No matter how fast we fish you out, it's going to sting. Everywhere."

"I won't fall," Amber retorted. One of Paragon's hands cupped her before him. She sat on it, legs swinging, carving tool in hand.

"What are you doing?" Althea asked curiously. "I thought he was finished."

"He is. This is just decoration. Scrollwork and things. On his axe handle and his battle harness." "What are you carving?"

"Charging bucks," Amber replied diffidently. She sheathed her tools abruptly. "Take me up, please," she requested. Without a word, the figurehead restored her to the deck.

The river was a vast gray road flowing away from them. The thick forest of the Rain Wilds loomed close on the starboard side, while on the port side the wide waters stretched far to another green wall of plant life. Althea took a deep breath of cool air flavored with river water and teeming plant life. Unseen birds called in the trees. Some of the vines that festooned the gigantic trees had put out fat purple buds. A tall column of dancing insects caught the sunlight on their myriad tiny wings. Althea grimaced at the sparkling sight. "I swear, every one of those pests spent the night in our cabin."

"At least one of them was in my room," Amber contradicted. "It managed to buzz near my ear most of the night."

"I'll be glad to see salt water again," Althea replied. "How about you, Paragon?"

"Soon enough," the ship replied distractedly.

Althea raised one eyebrow at Amber. The carpenter shrugged. For the past two days, the ship had had a preoccupied air. Althea was willing to give him however much space and time he needed. This decades-delayed home-coming had to be a strange and wrenching experience for him. She was neither serpent nor dragon, yet the daily losses of the serpents as they guided them north had appalled and distressed her. That the serpents fed upon their own dead, however pragmatic that practice might be in conserving food and inherited memories, horrified her.

Tintaglia's circling presence had protected them from the Chalcedean ships. Only twice had they been directly challenged. There had been one brief battle, put to an end when Tintaglia had returned to drive the foreign ship away. The second encounter had ended when She Who Remembers had risen from the depths to spray the Chalcedean vessel with venom. Her death, Althea thought, had been the most difficult one for Paragon. The crippled serpent had gradually wasted but had gamely continued in her migration. Unlike many of the serpents, she had actually reached the mouth of the Rain Wild River. The journey up it, against the current, had proven too much for her. One morning they had found her, wrapped motionless around Paragon's anchor chain.

Many had perished in the acid flow of the river water. Battered and weary as they were, their small injuries turned to gaping wounds in the rushing wash of the gray water. Neither the ship nor Tintaglia could make that last long stretch any easier for them. One hundred and twenty-nine serpents entered the river mouth with them. By the time the tangle reached the river ladder the Rain Wilders had constructed, their numbers had dwindled to ninety-three. The rough interconnecting corrals of thick logs impeded and diverted the river's shallow rush, deepening the flow just enough for the serpents to wallow upriver.

Rain Wild engineering skills had combined with the strong backs of both Traders and Tattooed to create an artificial channel that led to the ancient mudbanks. Tintaglia had supervised the quarrying of the silver-streaked mud. The stuff was near as stiff as clay. Yet another log corral had been built, and workers had toiled long cold hours painstakingly mixing the hard stuff with river water until Tintaglia approved of the sloppy muck. As the exhausted serpents managed to haul themselves out on the low banks of the river, workers had transported barrows of the sloshing mud and laved it over the serpents.

It had tormented Paragon that he could not witness the cocooning of the serpents. A large ship such as he could not approach through the shallow waters. Althea had gone in his stead. To her had fallen the task of telling him that only seventy-nine of the serpents had managed to complete their cocoons. The others had died, their bodies too wasted to summon the special secretions that would bind the mud into long threads to layer around themselves. Tintaglia had roared her grief at each death, and then shared out the wasted bodies as food amongst the remaining serpents. Despite her extreme distaste for that behavior, Althea thought it just as well. The dragon herself looked little better than the serpents. She refused to take time to hunt while the cocooning was going on. In a matter of days, her glittering hide hung on her in folds, despite the sympathetic workers who brought her birds and small game. Such largesse kept her alive, but not thriving.

Further work followed the cocooning. The muck-wrapped serpents had to be protected from the torrential deluges of a Rain Wild winter until the sheathing had dried hard. But eventually Tintaglia announced she was satisfied with the cocoons. Now the immense cases rested on the muddy bank of the river like giant seedpods hidden in a heaped litter of leaves, twigs and branches. Tintaglia once more gleamed since she had resumed her daily hunts. Some nights she returned to rest beside the cocoons, but increasingly she trusted the cadre of humans who watched over them from their tree-houses. True to her word, the dragon now patrolled the river to its mouth, and overflew the coast of the Cursed Shores.

Tintaglia still spoke hopefully of more serpents returning. Althea suspected this was the true motive behind her coastal vigilance. She had even hinted that perhaps she would send liveships far south to seek for lost survivors. Althea considered that a measure of her anguish at their losses. From Selden, Althea had learned that not all the cocoons would hatch. There was always some mortality at this stage of a dragon's development, but these weakened creatures were dying at far higher rates than normal. Selden seemed to mourn them as much as Tintaglia, though he could not completely explain to Althea how he knew which ones had perished unhatched.