Dragon Keeper recap

Generations after the last dragons vanished, the sea serpents finally return up the Rain Wild River to cocoon, but they come too late and too weak, and what hatches at Cassarick is a clutch of stunted dragons that cannot fly or hunt. The Rain Wild Traders, sick of feeding them, contract a company of heavily marked young outcasts as keepers and pay Captain Leftrin's barge Tarman to escort dragons and keepers upriver in search of the legendary Elderling city of Kelsingra, hoping the whole burden simply disappears. Among the keepers is Thymara, a girl who should have been exposed at birth and who is claimed by the imperious blue queen Sintara. Alise Kincarron, a Bingtown scholar trapped in a hollow marriage to the rich Hest Finbok, comes north to study the dragons and joins the expedition, accompanied by Hest's secretary Sedric, who has his own commission: to steal dragon blood and scales worth a fortune in Chalced. The expedition sets out into unmapped river country, the keepers begin to change into something not quite human, Alise and Leftrin fall in love, and Sedric quietly begins to take what he came for.

Previously, in the Liveship Traders trilogy: the Bingtown Traders' greatest asset was the liveship, a vessel built from wizardwood that woke into life and speech once three generations of its owning family had died aboard. The Vestrit family's ship Vivacia quickened for Althea Vestrit's father and was left instead to her brother-in-law Kyle Haven, setting off a long fight for the ship that dragged in the pirate Kennit, who took Vivacia and used her to make himself king of the Pirate Isles. Meanwhile Chalced made war on Bingtown, and Malta Vestrit and Reyn Khuprus of the Rain Wilds were caught up in what lay buried beneath the Rain Wild city of Trehaug: an entombed Elderling city and, in it, a chamber of dragon cocoons. Wizardwood was never wood. Every liveship had been built from the stolen cocoons of unhatched dragons, and the sea serpents that trailed the ships were dragons in an earlier stage of life, unable to complete it because they could no longer find their way up the Rain Wild River to cocoon and hatch. Tintaglia, the last dragon, hatched from the last intact cocoon, and in exchange for the Rain Wilders' help in guiding the serpents home she agreed to defend Bingtown from the Chalcedeans. The war ended in an alliance between Bingtown, the Rain Wilds, the Pirate Isles and the Three Ships folk. Kennit died; Malta and Reyn, transformed by long exposure to dragon influence into Elderlings, married; and the serpents, escorted at last, went up the river to spin their cocoons near Cassarick. It should have been the return of dragons to the world. Instead the serpents arrived old, exhausted and too few, and the memories they needed to shape themselves properly were largely lost.

The cocooned serpents hatch at Cassarick into a clutch of malformed, undersized dragons. They cannot fly, most cannot hunt, and their inherited memories are patchy and unreliable. Tintaglia, having got what she wanted from the bargain, is rarely seen. The Rain Wild Traders are left feeding a herd of enormous, arrogant, half-crippled creatures that eat everything the settlements can catch and give nothing back. In Trehaug, Thymara lives on the margins of that society: born so heavily marked that custom demanded she be left in the forest, saved by her father and resented by her mother, forbidden by Rain Wild law ever to marry or have children because of what she might pass on. She works the canopy as a gatherer and expects nothing else.

In Bingtown, Alise Kincarron has spent years assembling everything known about dragons and Elderlings from copied Trader scrolls. Plain and unmarriageable, she accepted a proposal from the wealthy Hest Finbok on contract terms that fund her study and permit her to travel, and discovered afterwards what her husband is like when the door closes. She uses the contract to go north to the Rain Wilds to see living dragons, and Hest sends his secretary Sedric with her, an old friend of hers who despises the journey and has motives he does not share. The Rain Wild Traders' Council, meanwhile, has hit on a solution to the dragon problem: pay them to leave. The dragons speak of an Elderling city called Kelsingra somewhere far upriver, and the Council will fund an expedition to find it.

The Council recruits keepers from among the heavily marked young of Trehaug and Cassarick, the ones their families are quietly glad to see go: Thymara, the tattooed former slave Tats, the strange and fearless Rapskal, the gentle Sylve, the ambitious Greft, Jerd and a dozen more. Each is claimed by a dragon, Thymara by the haughty blue queen Sintara. Captain Leftrin's barge Tarman is contracted to carry supplies and to shepherd the party, with the hunters Carson and Jess to feed it. Alise arrives at Cassarick expecting wonders and finds instead a herd of damaged, filthy, magnificent animals whose condition appalls her; she talks her way onto the expedition as its scholar and recorder. Leftrin, gruff and unpolished, is immediately taken with her.

The expedition starts upriver into country no living Rain Wilder has mapped. The dragons are proud, difficult and constantly hungry; the keepers learn quickly that tending them is closer to serving a court than herding livestock, and that a dragon's glamour can bend a human's judgement without the human noticing. Freed of their families and of Trehaug's rules, the young keepers begin sorting themselves out, with Greft arguing that the old law forbidding the marked to breed has no authority beyond the settlements. Aboard Tarman, Alise records everything, and the contrast between Leftrin's plain decency and the marriage she left behind becomes impossible for her to ignore. Sedric, meanwhile, is miserable, filthy, and increasingly desperate.

Sedric's real errand comes clear: dragon parts, blood, scales and organs, are worth an enormous amount in Chalced, where the aging Duke is said to be dying and will pay anything for a cure, and Hest has arranged for Sedric to bring some back. Sedric tells himself it is the price of a life he and Hest could have elsewhere. The river grows more dangerous, the dragons' tempers shorten as food runs thin, and the hunter Jess takes more interest in the dragons than in game. Among the keepers, the physical changes accelerate; constant contact with dragons is remaking them, and nobody knows where that ends. Thymara and Sintara circle each other in a bond that is equal parts devotion and exploitation.

The expedition is committed, far up an unmapped and corrosive river, with no proof that Kelsingra exists at all beyond the dragons' broken ancestral memories. Alise has accepted what her marriage is worth and what Leftrin means to her; Leftrin has fallen in love with her and is keeping his own secrets about the barge he sails. The keepers are visibly less human than when they left, Greft's faction is hardening, and the dragons' hunger is outpacing what two hunters can supply. Sedric, sickened by the river and by himself, begins secretly taking blood and scales from the weakest dragon, an act that is theft from a thinking being and would be a death sentence if the dragons discovered it. Downriver, the Traders congratulate themselves on how neatly the problem has floated away.

The expedition is committed and well up the Rain Wild River. Fifteen or so heavily marked young keepers, the stunted dragons, Leftrin's barge Tarman, two hired hunters and two Bingtown passengers are strung out along a poisonous river with no map beyond the dragons' unreliable ancestral memories of a city called Kelsingra. Thymara has been claimed by the blue queen Sintara and is learning that a dragon's affection is a form of hunger; the keepers are already changing physically from constant contact with them, growing more scaled and less human. Greft is quietly gathering the younger keepers around the argument that Rain Wild law, including the rule that the marked must never breed, has no force out here. Alise has seen enough of Leftrin's plain competence and enough of her husband's letters to understand what her marriage actually is, and Leftrin, who has troubles of his own concerning how his barge came to be what he is, has fallen in love with her. Sedric, sick of the river and desperate for the money that would buy him a different life, has begun secretly taking from the dragons the blood and scales he was sent to get, which is theft from a sentient being and, if the dragons ever learn of it, a killing matter. Nobody aboard yet knows whether Kelsingra exists, and Trehaug and Cassarick are already discussing how conveniently the whole problem has floated away upriver.