City of Dragons

“I’ll find a man to take the trunks down. You watch over her, son, and not just on the way down to the boat.”



“I will. I always do,” he replied, and neither he nor Malta seemed to take much notice of the door closing behind Jani. Nonetheless, as soon as he heard the latch set, Reyn leaned in over her belly to set his mouth softly on his wife’s lips. He held the kiss, as tender and passionate as if they were still newlywed, until she broke away and leaned her head on his chest. He stroked her gleaming golden hair, and then let his hand wander to her brow where his fingers caressed the scarlet crest that marked her as an Elderling. She trembled at his touch and, murmuring a soft rebuke, moved her head away from his hand.



“I know.” He sighed. “Not while we might hurt the baby or bring it too soon. I will wait. But I don’t want you to think I’m waiting too patiently!”



She laughed quietly and stepped free of his embrace. “Then be patient now and let me finish choosing what I must take.”



“No time,” he told her. Stepping to the wardrobe, he considered its contents for a moment. Then he darted swiftly in, seized a fat armful of clothes, turned, and deposited them in the traveling trunk. As Malta voiced a hopeless protest, he tucked them ruthlessly down and shut the lid on them. “There! All done! And now I will whisk you away. We will be taking the lifts down rather than the trunk stairs, and you know how slow they can be.”



“I could still manage the stairs,” Malta insisted indignantly, but secretly she was glad of his thoughtfulness. She did not feel as agile as she usually did, and her feet were often swollen and tender.



“Off we go, then. I’m sure I’ve put enough of everything in that trunk, and if not, there is the first one that was taken down to the boat this morning.”



“That was just the baby’s things. Just in case he surprises us in Cassarick. And Tillamon? Is she packed yet?”



“My sister is waiting for us at the lift.”



Malta cast a longing eye at the other wardrobe, but Reyn seized her hand, tucked it firmly into the crook of his arm, and opened the door. From the set of his mouth, Malta decided it was time to pretend to be meek and wifely. She caught up only one extra cloak and swirled it around her shoulders as he led her out into the day.



Not much sunlight reached the household level of the family tree even on a bright day. On gray winter days like this one, forest twilight was the rule. In the high treetops, a wind was battering the forest. She knew it only by the occasional flurries of leaves and needles that drifted down. Most of the trees that would shed their leaves for this season were already bared, but there were enough evergreen trees in this section of the Rain Wilds to shelter them from all but torrential rains.



The lifts were a series of platforms with basket-weave sides that traveled vertically from canopy to earth, operated by stoutly muscled men working a system of lines and pulleys and counterweights. Malta did not enjoy using the lifts, but she no longer feared them as she once had. In truth, she had dreaded taking the long spiraling staircases that wound around the tree trunks and were the only alternate routes to the forest floor.



Tillamon, cloaked and heavily veiled, awaited them. Malta wondered why but said nothing. Reyn, in his typically brotherly fashion, was not so discreet. “Why are you veiled as if for a trip to Bingtown?”



Tillamon stared at him through a mask of lace. “To visit the lower levels now is almost like going to Bingtown. There are so many staring outsiders in the city now. And not all of us, little brother, are so fortunate as to have had our changes make us lovelier.”



Malta knew the rebuke was for Reyn, not her. Even so, she repressed a squirm. Of late she had become more aware that she possessed everything that Tillamon had ever longed for. She had a husband and a child on the way. And she was undeniably beautiful. The changes the Rain Wilds had wrought on her had all been kindly ones. The fine scaling on her face was supple, the colors flattering. She had grown taller than she had expected, and her long hands and fingers were graceful. When she contrasted that to Tillamon’s pebbly face and the multiple dangling growths that fringed her jaw and ears, it was hard not to feel guilty at her good fortune, though none of Reyn’s sisters had ever seemed to resent her for it.



She followed Tillamon into the lift and waited for Reyn to join them. Reyn tugged the cord. High above them, a lift tender rang a bell in response and from below she heard his partner’s answering whistle. For a brief time they dangled, waiting. Then, with a small hitch and a lurch of Malta’s heart, they were descending.



The lift dropped more swiftly than she liked, and she found herself clutching Reyn’s arm. She was grateful when they reached the bottom of the first lift’s run and stepped out and then into the next lift. “Slower, please,” Reyn warned the tender sternly, and the man bobbed his head in response. He was Tattooed, she noted, and watched how his eyes lingered curiously on Tillamon’s veil. Tillamon noticed also, for she turned away from him to gaze out into the forest. She spoke only after the lift was in motion. “Sometimes I feel that I am the stranger here, when they stare at me like that.”