Free The Dragon Keeper by Hobb Robin Page A

smothered her. She had dreamed of making the trip to witness the dragons’ hatching since she had first heard of the serpents encasing themselves. Alise had begged it of her father, and when he had said it might be improper for her to travel on her own, she had flattered and bribed her younger brother’s wife until she had persuaded Alise’s younger brother to promise to accompany her. She had secretly sold off items from her hope chest to amass the passage money she needed and pretended to her parents that she had been saving from the small monthly allowance they gave her. The precious billet for the trip was still wedged in the corner of her vanity mirror. For weeks, she had seen it every day, a stiff rectangle of cream-colored paper scribbled over with a clerk’s spidery handwriting attesting that she had paid full price for two round-trips. That bit of paper had represented a promise to herself. It had meant that she would see what she had read of; she would witness an event that would, that must change the course of history. She would sketch the scene and she would write of it authoritatively, tying all she witnessed to her years of scholarly research. Then everyone would have to recognize her knowledge and ability and concede that although she might be self-educated on the matter, she was certainly far more than an eccentric old maid obsessed with dragons and their Elderling companions. She was a scholar.
    She would have something that belonged to her, something salvaged out of the miserable existence that life in Bingtown had become. Even before war had descended, her family’s fortune had been scraping bottom. They lived simply, in a modest manor house on the unfashionable edges of Bingtown. No grand park surrounded their home, only a humble rose garden tended by her sisters. Her father made his living by expediting trades between wealthier families. When war came and trading faltered, there was little profit for a go-between. She was, she knew, a plain, solid girl, from a plain, solid family ensconced firmly toward the lower end of the Bingtown Traders’ social ladder. She had never been anyone’s idea of a “good catch.” It had not brightened her forecast when her mother had delayed her debut into society until her eighteenth year. She’d understood the reasons: her family had been arranging and financing her older sister’s wedding. They’d had nothing to spare to launch yet another daughter. When, finally, she had been presented to Trader society three years ago, no man had raced to claim her from the butterfly mob of young girls. Three crops of Bingtown femininity had been released into the pool of eligible maidens since then, and with every passing year, her prospects of courtship and marriage had dimmed.
    The war with Chalced had obscured them entirely. Her mind shied from recalling those nights of fire and smoke and screams. Chalcedean vessels had invaded the harbor and burned the warehouses and half the market square to the ground. Bingtown, the fabled and fabulous trade town where “if a man could imagine it, he could find it for sale,” had become a city of stinking ruins and sodden ash. If the dragon Tintaglia had not come to their aid, like as not, Alise and her entire family would be tattooed slaves somewhere in Chalced by now. As it was, the invaders had been repelled, and the Traders had formed a rough alliance with the Pirate Isles. Jamaillia, their motherland, had come to its senses and seen that Chalced was not an ally but a plundering nation of thieves. Today, Bingtown Harbor was clear of invaders, the city had begun to rebuild, and life had begun a hesitant return to routine. She knew she should have been grateful that her family’s home had escaped burning, and that their holdings, several farms that grew mostly root crops, were now producing food that was greatly in demand.
    But the truth was, she wasn’t. Oh, not that she wished to be living in a half-burned hovel or sleeping in