In ev’ry fix I finds a friend;
In ev’ry brawl, a keg.
And so it is, when trouble brews
I drinks it to the dregs.
—Kragish sailor’s chantey
The waves swallowed Kaeldra in a shock of bitter cold. They rushed up her nose, sucked her head under. She cried out for help and choked on a flood of salty water.
And then she was rising. She broke through the foam and gulped for air, her legs astraddle something—Pyro! She grabbed for his neck and hung on tight; he hissed through the waves like a giant eel. Embyr was ahead, she saw, and to the left a flash of lighter green. Synge. The draclings dove and leaped and arced, great manes of spume billowing and shimmering in the moonlight.
The water was so cold it burned. Kaeldra sat up, clinging to the spiny, flexible ridge that ran down Pyro’s neck. Through the stinging salt spray, she saw the castle go drifting by. Tiny lights swarmed around it like spry-bugs. The bluff gradually flattened into a long beach rimmed by the town wall. Ahead she made out the black silhouette of a ship against the evening sky.
The draclings slowed, making hardly a ripple as they approached the ship. The hull, encrusted with barnacles, loomed above. It rocked and moaned in the sea swells near the stone wharf where it was moored. The draclings swam round the ship, past the small square portholes, beneath the creaking hawsers that stretched to the wharf. Kaeldra looked up and found what she sought. Atop the mast, which swayed across a moonlit cloud, the kestrel perched.
Wouldn’t you know it, she thought. The ship, no doubt, was bound for Kragrom. The kestrel led them infallibly toward their destination, heedless of the trouble it caused. What was trouble to the kestrel, who could fly off and reappear when all was well?
Voices. Footsteps thudded across the deck. The draclings slipped into the shadow of the hull and settled down into the icy water until only their nostrils showed. Kaeldra pressed herself flat against Pyro. She stifled a gasp as the water scalded her back with cold.
“. . . only a fish, but better to make sure. Can’t be too careful, with that ruckus on Rog,” a voice said. A lantern bobbed on the ship’s deck above, dripped puddles of molten gold upon the water. Kaeldra, not daring to move, followed the light with her eyes.
The sea made gentle slappings and suckings against the ship’s hull. Far away, a dog barked.
Footsteps again, fading. Kaeldra let out her breath.
The draclings swam silently for shore in the shadow of the wharf. The surf carried them in in a breathtaking rush. Kaeldra waded through the shallows, her body throbbing with cold. She huddled with the draclings in the sand near the wharf and waited to see what they would do next.
But they only flicked their tongues at her and thrummed. Slowly, Kaeldra grew aware that they expected something. They were waiting, waiting for her to act.
Kaeldra sighed. Hugging herself against the cold, she rose to a crouch and peered over the edge of the wharf. It looked empty, save for a single mule-drawn cart and an assortment of wooden casks grouped near the ship.
〈You stay here,〉 she said, wondering why she bothered, for they always did exactly as they pleased, no matter what she said.
She climbed onto the wharf and tiptoed across it, feeling dangerously exposed. If the man with the lantern should come looking right now . . .
But he did not. The mule’s ears twitched forward as she approached. It swished its tail and snorted. Kaeldra stroked its muzzle, murmuring, and soon the animal calmed.
There was no way to get on the ship. At least, not now. The gap between the ship and the wharf stretched as long as a man is tall. And if she did manage to jump it, the men inside would surely hear.
Kaeldra looked for the kestrel. It had moved from the mast and now perched in the confusion of rigging overhead. A massive hook dangled from the tangle of rope and swung back and forth above the deck.
A cargo hook, Kaeldra thought.
Cargo.
In the morning, the ship would load cargo from the wharf. The casks—they were cargo.
They were large casks, waist high. Large enough for a person to sit inside. Large enough for a dracling.
Kaeldra knocked on one cask and felt the fullness of it. She wrapped her arms around it and tried to lift it, but the cask would not budge.
Heavy. Full of liquid. Brew or wine, most likely.
She tugged at the chime hoop to see if it would come loose; a splinter slid beneath her nail. “Ouch!”
“Well, now, Coldran,” came a voice from behind her. “And so we meet again.”
Kaeldra whirled around. A man was sitting up in the cart. Thick, black eyebrows, graying hair—Yanil.
“You’re a more convincin’ boy without your braid, but I can’t say I fancy your haircut. Where be your friends?”
She knew she should say something, should think of something quick. But her mind was stuck like a cart in a bog.
“Often I’ve been wonderin’ about you,” Yanil went on, moving down toward the casks. “Quite the rousin’ exit you made. I wondered—could you be a witch? That would explain your hold over those dragons.” He scratched his chin. “But you didn’t seem a witch to me. You seemed—”
Kaeldra inched by the casks, ready to run.
“I wouldn’t do that.” She heard the iron in his voice. “I’ll give the cry if you do, and you’re well-known hereabouts, from what I gather.” She stopped, and when Yanil spoke again his voice was gentler. “Your dragons ate three rabbits from my barn and killed my son’s dog. I think you’ll be owin’ me your story, at least.”
A light slanted suddenly across the wharf stones. Kaeldra dropped to her stomach behind the casks.
“Who goes there?” a voice cried.
“ ’Tis I,” Yanil called out, in a lilting, slurred voice. “And Girtle, of course.”
The light moved, spilled through the cracks between casks. Kaeldra’s heartbeat hammered in her ears.
“Girtle? Where’s Girtle?”
“Why, right before your eyes, man. There. Over there.” From where she lay, Kaeldra could see Yanil clearly. He staggered back to his cart and stabbed a finger at the mule. “Girtle and I, we go way back. We’ve had many a long chat, me and Girtle girl, haven’t we now? And she never nags or talks back, unlike some females I could mention. Does ye, now, Girtle? Does ye?” He patted the mule’s rump. “No, you don’t, there now, that’s a good girl.”
“Well . . .” The light did not move. Cold seeped up from the stones, numbed Kaeldra’s chest and legs. Her tunic clung icily to her back. She bit down to silence the chattering of her teeth.
More footsteps. “What is it?” said another voice from the ship.
The first man muttered a response. “Old coot,” Kaeldra heard, and “crack-brained,” and “sampling his own wares.”
The light shifted away, and Kaeldra heard their footsteps fade across the deck.
“You’re shiverin’,” Yanil whispered. “It’s warmer in the cart. I’ll lend you some blankets if you’ll tell me how you came to be chaperoned by dragons.”
She wanted to trust him, this kind-seeming man. She wanted him to think well of her, or at least not despise her. Perhaps if he knew everything . . . Anyway, she had little choice. She must trust him or he would betray her to the sentries.
The moon hung low in the sky when Kaeldra finished telling her story. Yanil scratched his chin and looked at her thoughtfully. “That was a stout thing you did,” he said. “Gettin’ the medicine for your sister. But I can’t say I hold with what you’re doin’ now. Those beastlings—they may have been precious, but now they’re gettin’ big. They’re gettin’ perilous, as you saw yourself.”
“But I’m taking them away,” Kaeldra said. “I’m taking them away from people, to their kyn, where they will be safe. And,” she added hastily, “to where people will be safe from them.”
“Well, and I’m not so sure there be such a place. Not anymore. There was room for the Ancient Ones once, and splendid beasts they were. But now the world is full o’ folk. No matter where you travel, seems like someone’s got there first. The Ancient Ones, they can’t abide near folk, you know that, missy. It’s them killin’ our stock, and us killin’ them, and them, bein’ wild things, killin’ back.
“I’ve heard tales of a dragon migration, but gave them no credit. I guessed the Ancient Ones were done in long ago. But supposin’ there were such a place, where dragonkyn still live. How would you go about findin’ it?”
“Landerath will know. The man I told you about.”
“Aye, the man you’ve never met in the place you’ve never been.”
Kaeldra swallowed. The ship creaked; the waves hissed and rumbled against the shore.
“And—you don’t mind me askin’, missy—what about yourself? When the lord’s men find their way out of that labyrinth, you’re in a royal vat o’ brine. And another thing, about Rog. I’ve heard rumors of late, of strange goings-on about that place. Treason, an uprising, some suchlike. Not a profitable place to be.”
Kaeldra pulled the blankets tighter around her.
“And I suppose they’re close by, are they, as we sit and speak.”
Kaeldra hesitated, then nodded.
Yanil sighed. “You know they’ll be a menace, no matter where you take ’em. They’re wild animals, like the wolf cubs my Gar once brought home. Cute as kittens, they were. Like a fool, I let the lad talk me into keepin’ ’em—just till they grew a mite bigger, he said. But the wildness grows within ’em, no matter what you do. We kept ’em penned and their little bellies full, but within a half-moon they were killin’ chickens. And dragons be a hundredfold worse, growin’, as they do, to a monstrous size. And what on earth can feed ’em? Tell me that, now.”
“I—I don’t know,” Kaeldra said. “But there must be something. . . . Landerath, he’ll know.”
“Aye, the man you’ve never met in the place you’ve never been.”
It did sound hopeless when put like that. Kaeldra felt a sinking inside her. What would Yanil do now? Had she been wrong to trust him?
Yanil shook his head. “That fellow was right. I must be crack-brained.”
Kaeldra looked up.
“I didn’t kill those wolf cubs, though by the heavens I should have. I took ’em up to the high country. I don’t suppose they stayed there. If my neighbors knew what I did, they’d have a lynchin’ party with me as guest of honor.
“I’m thinkin’ I owe you, for that you saved my Gar. But if I get you on this ship to Kragrom, you must promise not to loose those beastlings until you know they’ll do no man harm. Do you promise that?”
“Oh, yes,” Kaeldra said. “Yes, I promise.”
Yanil sighed again. “You’re a liar,” he said, “and I’m crack-brained.”
Kaeldra watched as Yanil pried the lids off four casks with an iron bar. Not all of the casks were full, he explained. He had already delivered a dozen to the castle and had picked up the empty casks from his last trip. Often, the casks were returned with circular hatches cut in their lids. Yanil hated this practice, for it ruined the casks for storing brew. Now, however, the altered casks suited his purpose.
Kaeldra’s heart leaped at the loud creaks the lids made, and she glanced nervously toward the ship. But the sentry, perhaps believing it was just the old coot sampling more of his wares, did not appear.
“Well, and what do you think?” Yanil asked, inviting her to look inside a cask. “ ’Tisn’t the Red Hart Inn, but it’s travelin’ your way.”
It certainly was not an inn of any sort. The casks had seemed large from the outside. But now, as Kaeldra contemplated sitting in one, they seemed tiny and dark, full of a rank, sour odor.
She forced a smile. “This will do very well,” she said.
“Perhaps some hay to pillow that hard wood?” Yanil did not wait for an answer, but pulled handfuls of hay from his cart and stuffed them into the cask. “And for the beastlings,” he said, stuffing hay into the other three casks. “Now, perhaps you had better be callin’ ’em, before the sun comes up and the both of us get thrown in the brig.”
Kaeldra called for the draclings. Three heads appeared over the edge of the wharf. The draclings traipsed across the stone, eyeing Yanil. It seemed to Kaeldra that they had grown without her noticing; now they were longer than she was tall. Synge still limped, Kaeldra saw.
Girtle stamped and switched her tail. Yanil backed away. “You’ll be tellin’ them not to—”
“They won’t hurt you,” Kaeldra promised.
〈You must get in here,〉 she said, pointing at a cask, not at all certain that the draclings would obey.
Embyr reared up, resting her front talons on the rim of one cask. She sniffed at it, then sidled inside and curled up in the hay. She raised her head and flicked her tongue at Kaeldra. Relieved, Kaeldra scratched the dracling’s throat.
〈Come on, Pyro. You, too, Synge.〉 They disappeared into the casks.
“Perhaps you had better set the lids on,” Yanil said, with a wary glance at the draclings. Kaeldra did, and only then did Yanil come near. He tamped down the lids loosely, explaining that the draclings could push their way out if need be.
They can burn their way out if need be, Kaeldra thought. She could only hope that they would choose to accept their confinement.
Now it was her turn. Kaeldra unwrapped Yanil’s blanket and held it out to him. “No,” he said. He placed it back on her shoulders. “You’ll be needin’ it far more than I.”
“Thank you.” Kaeldra ducked her head so that Yanil would not see the tears welling in her eyes. She climbed into the cask. There was no way to get comfortable. She hadn’t enough space to sit cross-legged and so had to draw her legs up tight against her. Even so, her feet—one booted, one bare—were jammed against the cask, bent at a painful angle.
“I wish I had a boot to lend you,” Yanil said. He grinned, but his thick, black eyebrows pulled together in concern. “Here.” He handed her a waterskin and a bulging cloth bundle that smelled of cheese.
“No, they’re yours,” Kaeldra said. “You’ve already been too kind.”
“Take them,” Yanil said gruffly. “I’ll be off before you’re aboard. I’ll tamp your lid loose so you can push out and stretch your legs when it’s safe. But take care, for there be many who seek you and mean you no good.” He reached into the cask and grasped her shoulder.
“Thank you,” she said, blinking.
“Good luck to you now.” His voice was hoarse. Then the lid squeaked into place. She was alone.
She heard Yanil’s boots clump across the wharf, heard the groan of the cart as he got in. Then all was silent, save for the creak of ropes, the slap and growl of waves.
Kaeldra mind-touched the draclings and found them asleep. They liked small, dark places. Perhaps she need not worry. She tasted a chunk of cheese, herb cheese, the kind Ryfenn made at home. And all at once she was flooded with it. Home. The hum of Granmyr’s wheel. The milky smell of Lyf. Lambs prancing, stiff-legged, across a windswept graze.
The tears fell, then, salty, as if this farin sea were now a part of her.
Well, she didn’t care. She would return to Elythia whether she belonged there or not. She would cross this blighted sea to Kragrom, and thence to Rog. She would find this Landerath, leave the draclings in his care.
And then she would go home.
Kaeldra felt for the draclings again. Still sleeping. They were safe inside the casks for now; and she was safe, too, in the dark, unseen. She rested her forehead on her knees. Just for a moment, she let her eyes close.
An ear-splitting racket awoke her: shouting, rumbling, screeching, banging. All at once she was tumbled onto her side and rolled over and over. Her cask stopped with a crack. Something heavy slammed into it, another cask, Kaeldra thought. There was a shout nearby and a harsh creaking noise, and she felt herself rising, swinging in the air.
Kaeldra, remembering the big hook she had seen, tried to piece together what was happening. The hook could not attach to the cask, so there must be a net of some sort. She felt things thudding against her cask: other casks, no doubt. The creakings probably came from a winch. The sailors must have rolled her cask into a net and were winching it up onto the ship.
The cask swayed sickeningly, then lurched to one side. Kaeldra waited for the sense of being lowered gradually to the deck. Instead, she heard another shout and a whirring sound. Her stomach lunged upward while the rest of her dropped. She smacked down hard, banging her head against the lid. Sunlight blinded her. She groped for the lid but her eyes could not see and her legs felt numb. Her hand touched something—not a lid, too small, not flat enough. A boot.
“Well, well,” came a voice. “And what have we here?”