Read Online City of Dragons: Volume Three of the Rain Wilds Chronicles by Robin Hobb - Free Book Online Page A

fibers and then weave them. She treated some of them with pitch to make them waterproof. She made hats and I think cloaks. I never bought one, but given our circumstances now, I’m ready to try anything. I don’t think I’ve a whole shirt or pair of trousers left to my name.”
    “Bark,” Sedric echoed gloomily. He tried to imagine what such a hat would look like and decided he’d rather go bareheaded. “Maybe Captain Leftrin can bring fabric back from Cassarick. I think I can manage with what I’ve got until then.”
    “Well, we’ll have to, so it’s good that you think we can.” Such a remark from Hest would have been scathing sarcasm. From Carson, it was shared amusement at the hardships they would endure together.
    For a moment they both fell silent, musing. Carson had amassed a substantial bundle of wood. He pulled the strap tight around the sticks and hefted it experimentally. Sedric added a few more sticks to his and regarded the pile with dread. The bundle was going to be heavy, and the sticks would poke him and his back would ache tonight. Again. And here came Carson with more sticks, helpfully increasing the size of his pile. Sedric tried to think of something positive. “But when Leftrin returns from Cassarick, won’t he be bringing us more clothing in his supplies?”
    Carson added the sticks he’d brought to the stack and wrapped the strap around it. He spoke as he tightened it. “A lot will depend on if the Council members give him all the money they owe him. I expect they’ll drag their feet. Even if they pay him, what he can bring back is going to be limited to what he can buy in Cassarick and maybe in Trehaug. Food will come first, I think. Then supplies like tar and lamp oil and candles and knives and hunting arrows. All the things that help us survive on our own. Blankets and fabric and suchlike will come last. Woven goods are always dear in Cassarick. No grazing lands in the swamps, so no sheep for wool. These meadows are one reason Leftrin was so excited about putting in an order for livestock from Bingtown. But we can expect livestock to take months to arrive, and Tarman will have to make a return trip for them.”
    Captain Leftrin had gathered them for a meeting on the Tarman a few nights previously. He’d announced that he’d be making a run back down the river to Cassarick and Trehaug to buy as many supplies as they could afford. He’d report to the Rain Wild Traders’ Council that they had accomplished their undertaking and he’d collect the monies owed them. If keepers wanted anything special from Cassarick, they could let him know and he’d try to get it for them. Two of the keepers had promptly said that their earnings should be sent to their families. Others wanted to send messages to kin. Rapskal had announced that he wished to spend all his money on sweets, sweets of any kind.
    The laughter hadn’t died down until Leftrin had asked if anyone wanted to be taken back to Trehaug. There had been a brief silence then as the dragon keepers had exchanged puzzled glances. Go back to Trehaug? Abandon the dragons they had bonded with and return to their lives as outcasts among their own people? If they had been shunned for their appearances when they left Trehaug, what would the other Rain Wilders think of them now? Their time among the dragons had not lessened their strangeness. Quite the opposite: they had grown more scales, more spines, and in the case of young Thymara, a set of gauzy wings. The dragons seemed to be guiding their changes now so that they were more aesthetically pleasing. Even so, most of the keepers had clearly left humanity behind. None of them could return to the lives they had known.
    Alise had not bonded to a dragon and remained very human in appearance, but Sedric knew she would not return. There was nothing for her in Bingtown but disgrace. Even if Hest were willing to take her back, she would not return to that loveless sham of a marriage. Ever since he