Dragon Haven recap

The dragons, keepers and Leftrin's barge Tarman push further up the Rain Wild River. A violent flood sweeps Sedric overboard into the acid water, and the copper dragon Relpda saves him; the dragon blood he had stolen and swallowed binds the two of them mind to mind, which destroys his ability to think of dragons as merchandise. When the hunter Jess turns out to be running the same trade and tries to force him into it, the confrontation ends with Jess dead, Sedric's theft exposed, and Alise learning both what her husband is and what Sedric has been to him. Among the keepers, Greft's attempt to found a new society founders on Jerd's pregnancy and on his own hardening authority, and he dies before he can settle it. The dragons begin to hunt and then to fly, Rapskal's small red Heeby first, and the keepers finish changing into Elderlings. Alise and Leftrin become lovers; Sedric and Carson do too. At last the company comes out of the swamp into open country and finds Kelsingra: a vast Elderling city, intact, on the far bank of a river they cannot cross. They settle in a smaller village opposite it, and Leftrin turns Tarman downriver for supplies and payment.

Previously: in the Liveship Traders trilogy, Bingtown's liveships turned out to have been built from stolen dragon cocoons, and the sea serpents trailing them were dragons unable to complete their life cycle. Tintaglia, the last dragon, hatched in the buried Elderling city beneath Trehaug and bargained with the Rain Wilders: she would defend Bingtown against Chalced if they guided the serpents up the Rain Wild River to cocoon. Malta Vestrit and Reyn Khuprus, changed by dragon contact into Elderlings, married; the war ended in a new alliance. But the serpents arrived too late and too few, and in Dragon Keeper the clutch that hatched at Cassarick was stunted: dragons that could not fly or hunt, with fragmentary ancestral memories, dependent on Rain Wilders who resented feeding them. Tintaglia, her bargain kept, went her own way. The Traders' Council paid to make the problem leave: a company of heavily marked young outcasts was hired as keepers, and Captain Leftrin's liveship barge Tarman was contracted to escort dragons and keepers far upriver in search of Kelsingra, an Elderling city the dragons half remember. Among the keepers were Thymara, who should by custom have been left to die at birth and who was claimed by the haughty blue queen Sintara, and the former slave Tats, the odd, fearless Rapskal, the gentle Sylve, and Greft, who intended to lead. Alise Kincarron, a Bingtown dragon scholar in a hollow marriage to the wealthy Hest Finbok, joined the expedition as its recorder, accompanied by Hest's secretary Sedric, who was secretly sent to steal dragon blood and scales for the Chalcedean market and who had begun, at the close of that book, to take them.

A surge of flood water tears down the river, scattering the company and nearly destroying it. Sedric is swept overboard into water that burns, and it is Relpda, the small damaged copper dragon he has been secretly bleeding, who finds him and keeps him alive. The dragon blood he swallowed does what dragon blood does: it opens a bond between them, and Sedric can suddenly hear the creature he had been treating as a supply of raw material. It also begins changing him physically. Whatever he intended to bring back to Bingtown, he can no longer pretend the dragons are animals, and he is now tied to one of them.

The hunter Jess reveals that he is running the same trade as Sedric and for harder masters, and he intends to take a dragon apart properly rather than bleed one discreetly. He tries to force Sedric's cooperation, and the confrontation aboard Tarman ends with Jess dead. Sedric's own theft comes out with it. Leftrin has to decide what to do with a passenger who has been robbing the creatures the expedition exists to protect, and Alise learns two things at once: exactly what her husband arranged, and what Sedric has been to Hest for years. Her marriage stops being a disappointment and becomes a fact she is free to act on.

Cut off from the settlements, the keepers become a society of their own, and Greft intends to write its rules: who leads, who may pair with whom, and whether the Rain Wild ban on the marked having children still binds them. Jerd's pregnancy makes the question immediate rather than theoretical, and the company divides badly over it. Thymara, courted by Tats and complicated by Rapskal, refuses to be assigned to anyone. Aboard the barge, Alise and Leftrin stop pretending, and Leftrin tells her the truth he has kept from everyone: how Tarman came to be more alive than any other barge on the river. Sedric, bonded to Relpda and changing, begins to be useful instead of ornamental.

Food and river both turn against the expedition, and the dragons' survival becomes a matter of whether they can be made to hunt for themselves. Mercor pushes them toward it; the keepers drive, feed and groom them. Rapskal's relentless attention to Heeby pays off first: the small red dragon flies, which nobody expected of the least impressive animal in the herd, and it changes what the others believe is possible for them. The keepers, meanwhile, are visibly no longer Rain Wilders. Scales, altered eyes and lengthening bones mark them all, and the dragons acknowledge without much interest that they are making Elderlings, as their kind always did.

Greft's authority hardens into something the keepers will not accept, and his illness and injuries settle the argument before they can: he dies, and the company is left to work out its own arrangements without him. Jerd's pregnancy ends without a child. The river changes character as the expedition climbs beyond the swamp country, following old Elderling traces, and the dragons take to the air one after another as their strength returns. Thymara, Tats and Rapskal remain tangled with each other and unresolved. Sedric and Carson become a settled pair, and Alise, with no intention of ever going back to Bingtown, records an expedition that has stopped being an errand and become a migration.

The company comes out into dry, open country and finds Kelsingra: a great Elderling city standing largely intact on the far bank of a broad, swift river, seen first from the air by Rapskal on Heeby. It is real, and it is out of reach; dragons and keepers alike cannot cross the water. They settle instead in a smaller Elderling village on the near bank, stone buildings full of remembered voices, and begin to make it habitable. The dragons hunt and fly; the keepers are Elderlings now, long-lived and scaled and no longer anyone's outcasts. Alise is with Leftrin and will not be returning to her husband, and Sedric is bonded, changed and in love. Leftrin turns Tarman back down the river to collect the payment the Traders owe and the supplies the settlement needs, while downstream in Bingtown, Cassarick and Chalced, other people begin working out what a living Elderling city and a herd of recovered dragons might be worth to them.

The expedition finds what it was sent for. Beyond a stretch of dry, open country unlike anything in the Rain Wilds, a broad river runs past the ruins of a great Elderling city, and Rapskal, flying above it on Heeby, sees it whole. Kelsingra is real, largely intact, and on the far bank of a river too wide, cold and fast for the dragons and keepers to cross; the company settles instead in a smaller Elderling village on the near side, with stone buildings, remembered voices in the walls and a view of the city they cannot reach. The dragons that survived the journey are hunting for themselves, several are flying, and their keepers have finished becoming something new: scaled, long-lived, no longer Rain Wilders but Elderlings. Greft's attempt to found a new order among them has ended with his death, and the keepers are left to work out their own arrangements about pairing, children and leadership. Alise has left her marriage behind in every way that matters and is openly with Leftrin, who has told her the truth about Tarman. Sedric has confessed what he came upriver to do, been bonded to the copper queen Relpda, changed into an Elderling himself, and found in Carson a life he never planned for. Leftrin will take Tarman back down the river to claim the Traders' payment and bring back supplies, leaving dragons and keepers to hold a city they can only look at, while in Bingtown, Chalced and the Rain Wild councils other people are already deciding what a rediscovered Elderling city and a herd of recovering dragons are worth.