The Rain Wild Chronicles: The Complete 4-Book Collection. Robin Hobb
of Elderlings and dragons for his own profit?
The thought was unbearable. She couldn’t let her work come to such an end. She couldn’t ruin her life in such a headstrong, childish way. She had to go home. That was all there was to it.
The thought choked her and for a time she gave way to wild weeping. She cried as she had not cried in years, letting the deep sobs rise and choke her as they passed through her. The world rocked with her anguish. When finally the fury passed, she felt as if she’d been the victim of a terrible physical mishap, a hard fall or a beating. Sweat had plastered the hair to her head and her nose was running. Her head spun with dizziness. In the darkness she rose, her body aching. She groped around until she found one of her shirts in the wardrobe, pulled it out and wiped her face on it, not caring how she soiled it. What did it matter any more? What did anything matter? She wiped her face again on a dry spot and then sullenly threw the shirt to the floor. She heaved a great sigh. The tears were gone, used up with as little result as they ever had. It was time to surrender.
There was a timid knock at her door. Her hands flew to her face. Reflexively she patted her cheeks and smoothed her hair. She must not be seen like this. She cleared her throat and attempted to sound sleepy. ‘Who’s there?’
‘It’s Sedric. Alise, may I have a word with you?’
‘No. Not now.’ The refusal was out of her mouth before she thought about it. Her deep sadness blazed up and was suddenly heedless fury again. Another wave of vertigo swept over her. She put out a hand and steadied herself on the desk she would never use. For a time, a frozen silence held outside the door. Then Sedric’s voice came again, stiffly correct.
‘Alise, I’m afraid I must insist. I’m opening the door now.’
‘Don’t!’ she warned him, but he did, pulling it open to admit a slice of afternoon light into the small room. Instinctively she moved beyond its reach and half turned her face away from it. ‘What do you want?’ she demanded, and in the next breath, ‘I’m packing my clothing back in my wardrobe,’ she lied. ‘I’ll be ready to leave soon.’
He was merciless. He pulled the door open wide. She stooped to pick up the blouse from the floor, contriving to turn her back to him. As she did so, she lost her balance and nearly fell. In two steps he was inside the room, catching her arm and holding her up. She clung to him gratefully, both hands on his arm as she looked over his shoulder. ‘I’m dizzy,’ she admitted breathlessly.
‘It’s just the movement of the barge on the river,’ he said. In the same moment, she realized that the barge was in motion again. Behind him, she saw the stately parade of immense tree trunks as the ship moved upriver. Her vertigo was suddenly the gentle shifting of the floor under her feet. It passed.
‘We’re underway,’ she said in wonder. She found herself clutching his arm and staring over his shoulder at the passing riverbank. She could not quite believe it. She had defied him, and she had won. The barge was carrying her upriver.
‘Yes. We are.’ His response was curt.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said, and then wondered at her words. She wasn’t sorry, not at all, and yet she could not keep herself from apologizing. When had it become so ingrained in her to apologize whenever she wanted something for herself?
‘That makes two of us,’ Sedric responded. He took a deep breath and she was suddenly aware of how close she was standing to him. It was almost an embrace. She could smell him, the spicy scent he wore, the soap he used. She was surprised that she recognized those scents. They brought Hest sharply to mind, and she stepped back. She suddenly wondered if the two men used the same perfumed oils. She frowned, thinking about that.
His voice was deep and regretful as he interrupted her thoughts with, ‘Alise, this is mad. We’ve just embarked on a journey with no fixed destination, into territory that has never been successfully mapped. We’ll be gone for weeks, if not months! How can you do this? How can you just walk away from your entire life?’
A stillness welled up in her and then a joy as dizzying as the gentle rocking of the barge spun her. He was right. She’d left it all behind. After a moment, she found her voice. ‘Walk away from my life, Sedric? I’d run away from what you think is my life if I could. The hours sitting at my desk, scratching away with a pen, living a life based on things that happened centuries ago. Dining alone. Going to bed alone.’
Her bitterness seemed to shock him. ‘You don’t have to dine alone,’ he said awkwardly.
Her mouth was dry with bitterness. ‘I suppose I don’t have to go to bed alone, either. Yet, when one weds, one expects one’s husband to be her companion for those things. When Hest asked me to marry him, I foolishly thought that I wouldn’t have to worry about loneliness again. I thought he would be there, with me.’
‘Hest is with you when he can be.’ Sedric sounded uncertain, probably because he knew he was lying. ‘He’s a Trader, Alise. You know that means he must travel. If he doesn’t travel, he can’t find the special goods that bring in the prices that allow him to provide you with the life you have.’
‘You don’t understand, Sedric.’ She cut off the spiral of words that she had heard so many times from Hest in the early years of her marriage. The tightening noose of words that inevitably proved how selfish she was to resent being left home alone, night after night, week after week. ‘It isn’t that he’s away so much. I don’t mind that any more. I don’t pine after him. Do you know what I hate now, Sedric? I hate that I’m glad when he’s gone. Not because I like to be alone; I’ve learned a great tolerance for it. I’m very good at it, actually. I don’t think of him when he’s gone. I don’t wonder who he might be with or how he treats her.’ She halted abruptly. She’d made a promise to Hest, never to accuse him of lying again, never to pelt him with such suspicions. Sedric had been there and knew of the promise. She folded her lips tightly closed.
Her words had made him uncomfortable. She felt him shift slightly, as if he wished to move away from her but didn’t know how to untangle himself gracefully. With a leap of certainty, she knew her suspicions were well-founded. Hest did have someone else now, and Sedric knew about her. Knew about her and felt guilty for shielding Hest. She suddenly decided to free him from that guilt. ‘Don’t worry about it, Sedric. I promised I’d never ask again, and I won’t. I don’t wonder any more if other women in Bingtown know how little he cares for our bed. If they like him, they are welcome to him. I’m tired of his hard words, his hard heart, and his hard hands.’
She felt his muscles stiffen. ‘Hard hands?’ he said in a strangled voice. ‘Does he— Alise, he hasn’t … Has Hest ever struck you?’ He sounded horrified.
‘No,’ she admitted in a low voice. ‘No, he has never struck me. But there are many ways for a man to be hard-handed with a woman that do not involve striking her.’ She thought of how he would take her arm and grip it when he wished to leave an evening’s entertainment and she had not responded immediately to his polite suggestions that it was time for them to go home. She thought of how he sometimes took things from her, not snatching them but removing them from her grip as if she were an errant child. She refused to think of his hands on her shoulders or upper arms, gripping so tight that sometimes she had bruises, as if she might flee him even though she had never shown any resistance to his attempts to impregnate her.
Sedric cleared his throat and moved away from her. ‘I’ve known Hest a long time,’ he said stiffly. ‘He’s not a bad person, Alise. He’s just—’ He halted and she saw him searching for a word.
‘He’s just Hest,’ she finished for him. ‘He’s a hard man. Hard-handed. Hard-hearted. He doesn’t strike me. He doesn’t have to. He has a hard, cruel mouth when he’s crossed. He can humiliate me with a glance. He can pound me with words and smile while he’s doing it, as if he doesn’t realize what he’s doing. But he does. I’m ready to admit that to myself now. He does know just exactly how much he hurts me and how often.’
She turned away from his shocked gaze but kept her eyes on the moving riverbank. ‘I’m not sorry,’ she finally