ROBIN HOBB
City of Dragons

Copyright

This novel is entirely a work of fiction.

The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental

HarperVoyager

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First published in Great Britain by HarperVoyager 2012

Copyright © Robin Hobb 2012

Robin Hobb asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

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Source ISBN: 9780007273805

Ebook Edition © April 2012 ISBN: 978000729026 0

Version: 2017-10-06

To the Little Red Hen

Table of Contents

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Prologue: Tintaglia and IceFyre

Chapter One: The Duke and The Captive

Chapter Two: Dragon Battle

Chapter Three: Pathways

Chapter Four: Kelsingra

Chapter Five: A Bingtown Trader

Chapter Six: Marked by the Rain Wilds

Chapter Seven: Dragon Dreams

Chapter Eight: Other Lives

Chapter Nine: Return to Cassarick

Chapter Ten: Kidnapped

Chapter Eleven: Flight

Chapter Twelve: Illumination

Chapter Thirteen: Second Thoughts

Chapter Fourteen: Shopping

Chapter Fifteen: Strange Bedfellows

Epilogue: Homeward Bound

Keep Reading

About the Author

By Robin Hobb

About the Publisher

PROLOGUE
Tintaglia and IceFyre

She rode the air currents easily, her legs sleeked tight against her body, her wings spread wide. On the undulating desert sands below, her rippling shadow showed her as a serpentine creature with bat-like wings and a long, finned tail. Tintaglia thrummed deep in her throat, a purr of pleasure in the day. They had hunted at dawn and hunted well. They had made their separate kills, as they always did, and spent the morning in feasting and then sleep. Now, smeared still with the blood and offal of the hunt, the two dragons had another goal in mind.

Ahead and slightly below her, IceFyre was a gleaming black shape. His long body flexed as he shifted his weight to catch and ride the wind. His torso was thicker and heavier than hers, his body longer. Her feather-like scaling glittered a scintillating blue, but he was an even black all over. His long encasement in ice had taken a toll on his body, one that was taking years to heal. His larger wings still had rents in the heavy webbing between the finger ribs. The smaller injuries to his body were long gone, but the tears in his wings would knit more slowly, and the welted scars of their healing would always be visible. Unlike my own azure perfection. Out of the corner of her eyes, Tintaglia admired her glittering wings.

As if he sensed her lack of attention to him, IceFyre banked abruptly and began his circling descent. She knew their destination. Not too far away a rocky ridge erupted above the sand. Stunted trees and grey-green brush populated its jagged edges and rough gullies. Just before the brushy ridge was a hidden oasis, in a wide, sandy basin, surrounded by a scatter of trees. The water rose from the depths of the earth to form a wide, still pool. Even in winter, the depression cupped the day’s warmth. They would spend their early afternoon soaking in the sun-warmed waters of the oasis to cleanse the blood from their hides and then rolling luxuriantly in the rough sand to polish their scales. They knew the spot well. They varied their hunting grounds over a wide range, but every ten days or so, IceFyre led them back here. He claimed it was a place he remembered from his distant youth.

Once, there had been a colony of Elderlings here that had tended the visiting dragons. Of their white stone buildings and carefully nurtured vineyards, nothing remained. The encroaching desert had devoured their settlement, but the oasis remained. Tintaglia would have preferred to fly much farther south, to the red sand deserts where winter never came, but IceFyre had refused. She suspected that he lacked the stamina for such a flight and had thought, more than once, of leaving him and going alone. But the terrible isolation of her long imprisonment in her cocoon had left its mark on her. Dragon companionship, even crotchety, critical companionship, was preferable to isolation.

IceFyre flew low now, nearly skimming the baked sand. His wings moved in sporadic, powerful beats that drove his glide and stirred the sand. Tintaglia followed, emulating him as she honed her own flying skills. There was much she did not care for in her mate, but he was truly a lord of the air.

They followed the contours of the land. She knew his plan. Their glide would carry them up to the lip of the basin, and then down in a wild slide that paralleled the slope of the dunes. It would end with both of them splashing, wings still spread, into the still, sun-warmed waters.

They were halfway down the slope when the sand around the upper edges of the basin erupted. Canvas coverings were flung aside and archers rose in ranks. A phalanx of arrows flew toward them. As the first wave of missiles rattled bruisingly off her wings and flanks, a second arced toward them. They were too close to the ground to batter their way to altitude again. IceFyre skimmed and then slewed round as he hit the shallow waters of the pool. Tintaglia was too close behind him to stop or change her path. She crashed into him and as their wings and legs tangled in the warm shallow water, spearmen rose from their camouflaged nests and came at them like an army of attacking ants. Behind them more ranks of men rose and surged forward with weighted nets of stout rope and chain.

Heedless of how he might injure her, IceFyre fought free of Tintaglia. He splashed from the shallow pool and charged into the men, trampling her into the water as he went. Some of the pike men ran; he crushed others under his powerful hind feet, then spun, and with a lash of his long tail, knocked down a score of others. Dazed, mired in the water, she saw him work his throat and then open wide his mouth. Behind his rows of gleaming white pointed teeth, she glimpsed the scarlet and orange of IceFyre’s poison sacs. He spun toward his attackers and his hissing roar carried with it a scarlet mist of venom. As the cloud enveloped the men before him, their screams rose to the blue cup of sky.

The acid ate them. Armour of leather or metal slowed but did not stop it. The droplets fell from the air to the earth, incidentally passing through human bodies on the way. Skin, flesh, bone and gut were holed by the passing venom. It hissed as it struck the sand. Some men died quickly but most did not.

Tintaglia had stared too long. A net thudded over her. At every junction of knot, the ropes had been weighted with dangling lumps of lead. Chains, some fine, some heavy, and some fitted with barbed hooks, were woven throughout the net. It trapped and tangled her wings, and when she clawed at it with her front legs, it wrapped them as well. She roared her fury and felt her own poison sacs swell as spearmen waded out into the shallow waters of the pond. She caught a glimpse of archers beginning a stumbling charge down the sandy slopes, arrows nocked to their bows. She jerked as a spear found a vulnerable spot between the scales behind her front leg, in the tender place between leg and chest. It did not penetrate deeply, but Tintaglia had never been stabbed with anything before. She turned, roaring out her pain and anger and her venom misted out with her cry. The spearmen fell back in horror. As the venom settled on the net, the lines and chains weakened and then gave way to her struggles. Tangles of it still wrapped her, but she could move. Fury enveloped her. Humans dared to attack dragons?

Tintaglia waded out of the water and into the midst of them, slashing with her claws and lashing with her tail, and every scream of rage she emitted carried a wave of acid toxin with it. Soon the shrill shrieks of dying humans filled the air. She did not need to spare a glance for IceFyre: she could hear the carnage he was wreaking.

Arrows rattled off her body and thudded painfully against her entangled wings. She flapped them, tumbling a dozen men with them as she flung the last bits of netting free. But her opened wings had bared her vulnerability. She felt the hot bite of an arrow beneath her left wing. She clapped her wings closed, realizing too late that the humans had been trying to provoke her into opening them to expose the more tender flesh beneath. But closing her wing only pushed the arrow shaft in deeper. Tintaglia roared her pain and spun again, lashing with her tail. She caught a brief glimpse of IceFyre, a human clutched in his jaws and raised aloft. The dying man’s shriek rose above the other battle sounds as the dragon severed his body into two pieces. Cries of horror from more distant ranks of humans were sweet to hear and she suddenly understood what her mate was doing.

His thought reached her. Terror is as important as killing. They must be taught never even to think of attacking dragons. A few we must allow to escape, to carry the tale home. Grim and terse, he added, But only a few!

A few, she agreed and waded out of the waters and in amongst the men who had gathered to slay her, batting them aside with her clawed front feet as easily as a cat would bat at a string. She snapped at them, clipping legs from bodies, arms from shoulders, maiming rather than killing quickly. She lifted her head high, and then flung it forward, hissing out a breath laden with a mist of acid venom. The human wall before her melted into bones and blood.

As afternoon was venturing toward evening, the two dragons flew a final circle around the basin of land. A straggle of warriors fled like disoriented ants toward the scrub-covered ridge. Let them spread the word! IceFyre suggested. We should return to the oasis before their meat begins to spoil. He banked his wings and turned away from their lazy pursuit and Tintaglia followed.

His suggestion was welcome. The spear had fallen out of the hole it had made in her hide, but the arrow on the other side had not. She had not meant to drive it deeper into herself. In a quiet moment after the first slaughter was over and while the mobile survivors were fleeing, she had tried to pull it out. Instead, it had broken off and the remaining nub of wood that protruded was too short for her to grip with her teeth. Clawing at it had only pushed it deeper. She felt the unwelcome intrusion of the wooden shaft and metal head into her flesh with every beat of her wings.

How many humans fought against us? she wondered.

Hundreds. But what does it matter? They did not kill us, and those we allow to escape will carry the word to their kind that they were foolish to try.

Why did they attack us?

The attack did not fit with her experience with humans. The people she had encountered had always been in awe of her, more inclined to serve her than attack her. Some had squeaked defiance but she had found ways to bring them into line. She had fought humans before, but not because they had ambushed her. She had killed Chalcedeans only because she had chosen to ally herself with the Bingtown Traders, killing their enemies in return for their help for the serpents that would, after metamorphosis, become dragons. Could this attack be related to that? It seemed unlikely. Humans were so short-lived. Were they capable of such reasoned vengeance?

IceFyre’s rationale was simpler. They attack us because they are humans and we are dragons. Most humans hate us. Some pretend to awe and bring gifts, but behind their flattery and cowering, there is hatred for us. Never forget that. In this part of the world, humans have hated us for a very long time. Once, before I emerged as a dragon, the humans here sought to destroy all dragons. They fed slow poison to their own herds to try to kill us. They captured and tortured our Elderling servants in the hope of finding secrets they might use against us. They destroyed our strongholds and the stone pillars by which our servants travelled in an attempt to weaken us. Those few of us they managed to kill, they butchered like cattle, using the flesh and blood of our bodies as medicines and tonics for their feeble bodies.

I do not recall any of this. Tintaglia searched her ancestral memories in vain.

There is much you do not seem to recall. I think you were encased too long. It damaged your mind and left you ignorant of many things.

She felt a spark of anger toward him. IceFyre often said such things to her. Usually after she had implied that his long entrapment in the ice had made him partially mad. She stifled her anger for now; she needed to know more. And the arrow in her side was pinching her.

What happened? Back then?

IceFyre turned his head on its long neck and gave her a baleful look. What happened? We destroyed them, of course. Humans are nuisance enough without letting them think they can defy our wishes.

They were nearing the spring at the heart of the oasis. Human carcasses littered the sand; swooping down into the basin was like descending into a pool of blood scent. In the late afternoon sun the corpses were starting to bake into carrion.

After we feed, we will leave here and find a cleaner place to sleep, the black dragon announced. We will have to abandon this spot for a time, until jackals and ravens clean it for us. There is too much meat here for us to consume at one time, and humans spoil quickly.

He skidded to a landing in the pool where a few human bodies still bobbed. Tintaglia followed him in. The waves of their impact were still brushing the shore when he picked a body out of the water. Avoid the ones encased in metal, he counselled her. The archers will be your best choices. Usually they just wear leather.

He sheared the body into two, and caught one of them before it could fall into the water. He tossed the half-carcass up into the air, then caught it in his jaws, tipping his head back to swallow it. The other half fell with a splash and sank in the pool. IceFyre selected another one, engulfing it head first, crushing the body with his powerful jaws before swallowing it whole.

Tintaglia waded out of the contaminated water and stood watching him.

They will spoil rapidly. You should eat now.

I’ve never eaten a human. She felt a mild revulsion. She’d killed many humans, but eaten none of them. That seemed odd, now.

She thought of the humans she had befriended: Reyn and Malta and her young singer Selden. She’d set them on the path to being Elderlings and not given much thought to them since then. Selden. She felt a spark of pleasure at her memory of him. Now there was a singer who knew how to praise a dragon. Those three humans she had chosen as her own, and made them her Elderlings. So they were different, perhaps. If she happened to be near one of them when they died, she’d eat the body, to preserve their memories.

But eating other humans? IceFyre was right. They were only meat. She moved along the shore of the pool and chose a body that was fresh enough to still be leaking blood. She sheared him in two, her tongue writhing at the feel of cloth and leather, and then chewed him a few times before consigning him to the powerful crushing muscles at the back of her throat.

The body went down. Meat was meat, she decided, and she was hungry after the battle.

IceFyre ate where he was, wading a few steps and then stretching his neck out to reach for more dead. There was no lack of them. Tintaglia was more selective. He was right about how quickly humans spoiled. Some already stank of decay. She looked for those who had died most recently, nosing aside the ones that were stiffening.

She was working her way through a pile of bodies when one gave a low cry and tried to crawl away from her. He was not large, and venom had eaten part of his legs away. He dragged himself along, whimpering, and when IceFyre, attracted by the sounds, approached, the boy found his tongue.

‘Please!’ he cried, his voice breaking back to a child’s squeak on the word. ‘Please, let me live! We did not wish to attack you, my father and me. They made us! The Duke’s men took my father’s heir-son and my mother and my two sisters. They said that if we did not join the hunt for you, they would burn them all. That my father’s name would die with him, and our family line would be no more than dust. So we had to come. We didn’t want to harm you, most beautiful ones. Most clever dragons.’

‘It’s a bit late to try to charm us with praise,’ IceFyre observed with amusement.

‘Who took your family?’ Tintaglia was curious. The bone was showing in the boy’s leg. He wouldn’t survive.

‘The Duke’s men. The Duke of Chalced. They said we had to bring back dragon parts for the Duke. He needs medicine made from dragon parts to live. If we brought back blood or scales or liver or a dragon’s eye, then the Duke would make us rich forever. But if we don’t …’ The boy looked down at his leg. He stared at it for a time and then something in his face changed. He looked up at Tintaglia. ‘We’re already dead. All of us.’

‘Yes,’ she said, but before the word settled in the boy’s mind, IceFyre had reached out and closed his jaws on the lad’s torso. It happened as quickly as serpent strike.

Fresh meat. No sense letting him start to rot like the others.

The black dragon threw back his head, engulfed the rest of the boy’s body, swallowed and moved away to the next pile of carcasses.

Day the 29th of the Still Moon

Year the 7th of the Independent Alliance of Traders

From Reyall, Acting Keeper of the Birds, Bingtown to Kim, Keeper of the Birds, Cassarick

Greetings, Kim.

I have been given the task of conveying to you a complaint that has been received from several of our clients. They allege that confidential messages received show signs of tampering, even though the wax plugs of the message cylinders appear intact. In two cases, a sealing wax stamp was cracked on a highly confidential scroll and in a third, the wax seal was found in pieces inside the message cylinder, and the message scroll appeared to have been spindled crookedly, as if someone had opened the cylinder, read the messages, and then replaced them, resealing the cylinders with Bird Keeper wax. These complaints come from three separate traders, and involve messages received from Trader Candral of Cassarick.

No official investigation has been requested yet. I have begged them to allow me to contact you and request that you speak with Trader Candral and ask for a demonstration of the sort of sealing wax and impression stamp that he is using for his messages. It is my hope and the hope of my masters here in Bingtown that this is merely a matter of inferior, old or brittle sealing wax being used rather than a case of a keeper tampering with messages. Nevertheless, we would request that you scrutinize any journeymen or apprentice keepers who have come into your employ in the last year.

It is with great regret that we ask this and hope that you will not take it amiss. My master directs me to say that we have the greatest confidence in the integrity of the Cassarick Bird Keepers and look forward to putting this allegation to rest.

The favour of a swift response is requested.

CHAPTER ONE
The Duke and The Captive

‘There has been no word, Imperial One.’ The messenger on his knees before the Duke fought to keep his voice steady.

The Duke, cushioned and propped on his throne, watched him, waiting for the moment he would break. The best a bearer of bad tidings could expect was a flogging. But delayed bad news merited death.

The man kept his eyes down, staring doggedly at the floor. So. This messenger had been flogged before. He knew he would survive it and he accepted it.

The Duke made a small gesture with his finger. Large movements took so much energy. But his chancellor had learned to watch for small motions and to respond quickly to them. He, in turn, made a more eloquent motion to the guard, and the messenger was removed. The boots of the guards thudded and the lighter sandals of the messenger pattered between them as they hurried him off. No one ventured a word. The Chancellor turned back to him and bowed low, his forehead touching his knees. Slowly he knelt, and then was bold enough to look at the Duke’s sandals.

‘I am grieved that you had to be subjected to such an unsatisfactory message.’

Silence held in the audience chamber. It was a large room with walls of rough stone that reminded all who entered that once it had been part of a fortress. The arched ceiling overhead had been painted a midnight blue with the stars of a midsummer night frozen forever there. Tall slits of windows looked out over a vista of sprawling city.

No point in this city was taller than the Duke’s hilltop citadel. Once the fortress had stood upon this peak, and within its walls a circle of black standing stones under the open sky had been a place of great magic. Tales told of how those stones had been toppled, their evil magic vanquished. Those same stones, the ancient runes on them obscured and defaced, now lay splayed out in a circle around his throne, flush to the grey flagged floor that had been laid around them. The black stones pointed to the five corners of the known world. It was said that beneath each stone there was a square pit into which the sorcerous enemies of ancient Chalced had been confined to die. The throne in the centre reminded all that he sat where, of old, all had feared to tread.

The Duke moved his lips, and a page sprang to his feet and darted forward, a bowl of cool water in his hands. The boy knelt and offered it to the Chancellor. The Chancellor, in turn, advanced on his knees, to lift the bowl to the Duke’s lips.

He tipped his head and drank. When he lifted his face another attendant had appeared, offering the Chancellor a soft cloth that he might dry the Duke’s face and chin.

Afterwards, he allowed the Chancellor to retreat. Thirst sated, he spoke.

‘There is no other word from our emissaries in the Rain Wilds?’

The Chancellor hunched lower. His robes of heavy maroon silk puddled around him. His scalp showed through his thinning hair. ‘No, most illustrious one. I am shamed and saddened to tell you that they have not sent us any fresh tidings.’

‘There is no shipment of dragon flesh on its way?’ He knew the answer but forced Ellik to speak it aloud.

The Chancellor’s face nearly touched the floor. ‘Radiant lord, we have no word of any shipment, I am humiliated and abashed to tell you.’

The Duke considered the situation. It was too great an effort to open his eyes all the way. Hard to speak loud enough to make his voice carry. His rich rings of heavy gold set with massive jewels hung loose on his bony fingers and weighted down his hands. The lush robes of his majesty could not cloak his gauntness. He was wasting away, dying even as they stared at him, waiting. He must give a response. He must not be seen as weak.

He spoke softly. ‘Motivate them. Send more emissaries, to every possible contact we have. Send them special gifts. Encourage them to be ruthless.’ With an effort he lifted his head and his voice. ‘Need I remind you, any of you, that if I die you will be buried with me?’

His words should have rung against the stones. Instead, he heard what his followers heard; the shrill outrage of a dying old man. Intolerable that one such as he might die without an heir-son! He should not have to speak for himself; his heir-son should be standing before him, shouting at the nobles and forcing them to swift obedience. Instead he had to whisper threats at them, hissing like a toothless old snake.

How had it come to this? He had always had sons, and to spare. Too many sons, but some had been too ambitious for his liking. Some he had sent to war, and some he had sent to the torture chamber for insolence. A few he had poisoned discreetly. If he had known that a disease would sweep away not only his chosen heir but his last three sons, he might have kept a few in reserve. But he had not. And now he was down to one useless daughter, a woman of near thirty with no children of her own and a mannish way of thinking and moving. A thrice-widowed woman with the ill luck never to have borne a child. A woman who read books and wrote poetry. Useless to him, if not dangerous as a witch. And he had no vigour left in his body to get a woman with child.

Intolerable. He could not die son-less, his name to become dust in the world’s mouth. The dragon cure must be brought to him, the rich dragon blood that would restore his youth and manhood. Then he would get himself a dozen heirs and keep them safely locked away from all mishap.

Dragon’s blood. So simple a cure, and yet none seemed able to supply it to him.

‘Should my lord die, my sorrow would be so great that only interment with you would bring me any peace, most gracious one.’ The Chancellor’s ingratiating words suddenly seemed a cruel mockery.

‘Oh, be silent. Your flattery annoys me. What good is your empty loyalty? Where are the dragon parts that would save me? Bring me those, and not your idle praise. Does no man here serve me willingly?” It demanded strength he could not spare, but this time his shout rang out. As his gaze swept them, not a one dared to meet his eyes. They cowered and for a time, he let them recall their hostage sons, not glimpsed by any of them for many months. He let them wonder for several long moments if their heirs survived before he asked in a conversational tone, “Is there any word from the other force we sent, to follow the rumours that dragons were seen in the desert?’

The Chancellor remained as he was, trapped in a frozen agony of conflicting orders.

Do you seethe within, Ellik? he wondered. Do you remember that once you rode at my stirrup as we charged into battle? Look at what the warlord and his sword arm have become: the doddering old man and the cringing servant. If you would but bring me what I need, all would be as it once was. Why do you fail me? Do you have ambitions of your own? Must I kill you?

He stared at his chancellor but Ellik’s eyes remained cast down. When he judged that the man was close to breaking, he snapped at him, ‘Answer!’

Ellik lifted his eyes and the Duke saw the fury contained behind his subservient grey gaze. They had ridden together too long, fought side by side too often for them to be completely successful at concealing their thoughts from one another. Ellik knew the Duke’s every ploy. Once he had played to them. But now his sword hand was becoming weary of these games. The Chancellor took a deep breath. ‘As of yet, there has been no word, my lord. But the visits of the dragons to the water have been irregular, and we have ordered our force to remain where they are until they are successful.’

‘Well. At least we have not had word of their failure, yet.’

‘No, glorious one. There is still hope.’

‘Hope. You, perhaps, hope. I demand. Chancellor, do you hope that your name will survive you?’

A terrible stillness seized the man. His Duke knew his most vulnerable spot. ‘Yes, Lord.’ His words were a whisper.

‘And you, you have not only an heir-son, but a second son as well?’

The Duke was gratified when the man’s voice shook. ‘I am so blessed, yes, gracious one.’

‘Mmm.’ The Duke of Chalced tried to clear his throat, but coughed instead, the sound triggering a scuttling of servants. A fresh bowl of chilled water was offered, as was a steaming cup of tea. A clean white cloth awaited in the hands of another knee-walking servant, while yet another offered a glass of wine.

A tiny flick of his hand dismissed them all. He drew a rasping breath.

‘Two sons, Chancellor. And so you hope. But I have no son. And my health fails for lack of one small thing. A simple remedy of dragon’s blood is all I have asked. Yet it has not been brought to me. I wonder: is it right that you have so much hope that your name will remain loud in the world’s ear, while mine will be silenced for that lack? Surely not.’

Slowly the man grew smaller. Before his lord’s stare, he collapsed in on himself, his head falling to his bent knees, and then his whole body sinking down, conveying physically his wish to be beneath his duke’s notice.

The Duke of Chalced moved his mouth, a memory of a smile.

‘For today, you may keep both your sons. Tomorrow? Tomorrow, we both hope for good news.’

‘This way.’

Someone lifted the heavy flap of canvas that served as a door. A slice of light stabbed into the gloom, but as swiftly vanished, to be replaced by yellow lamplight. The two-headed dog in the stall next to his whined and shifted. Selden wondered when the poor beast had last seen daylight, real daylight. The crippled creature had already been in residence when Selden had been acquired. For him, it had been months, perhaps as long as a year, since he had felt the sun’s touch. Daylight was the enemy of mystery. Daylight could reveal that half of the wonders and legends displayed in the tented bazaar’s shoddy stalls were either freaks or fakes. And daylight could reveal that even those with some claim to being genuine were in poor health.

Like him.

The lantern light came closer, the yellow glare making his eyes water. He turned his face away from it and closed his eyes. He didn’t get up. He knew the exact length of the chains attached to his ankles, and he had tried his strength against theirs when they had first brought him here. They had grown no weaker, but he had. He lay as he was and waited for the visitors to pass. But they halted in front of his stall.

‘That’s him? I thought he would be big! He’s no bigger than an ordinary man.’

‘He’s tall. You don’t notice it so much when he’s curled up like that.’

‘I can hardly see him, back in that corner. Can we go in?’

‘You don’t want to go inside the reach of his chain.’

Silence fell, and then the men spoke in low voices. Selden didn’t move. That they were discussing him didn’t interest him in the least. He’d lost the ability to feel embarrassed or even humiliated. He still missed clothing, badly, but mainly because he was cold. Sometimes, between shows, they would toss him a blanket, but as often as not they forgot. Few of those who tended him spoke his language, so begging for one did him no good. Slowly it came to his feverish brain that it was unusual that the two men discussing him were speaking a language he knew. Chalcedean. His father’s tongue, learned in a failed effort to impress his father. He did not move or give them any sign that he was aware of them, but began to listen more closely.

‘Hey! Hey, you. Dragon boy! Stand up. Give the man a look at you.’

He could ignore them. Then, like as not, they would throw something at him to make him move. Or they would begin to turn the winch that tightened the chain on his ankle. He’d either have to walk to the back wall or be dragged there. His captors feared him and ignored his claims to be human. They always tightened his chain when they came in to rake out the straw that covered the floor of his stall. He sighed and uncoiled his body and came slowly to his feet.

One of the men gasped. ‘He is tall! Look at the length of his legs! Does he have a tail?’

‘No. No tail. But he’s scaled all over. Glitters like diamonds if you take him out in the daylight.’

‘So, bring him out. Let me see him in the light.’

‘No. He doesn’t like it.’

‘Liar.’ Selden spoke clearly. The lantern was blinding him but he spoke to the second of the two shapes he could discern. ‘He doesn’t want you to see that I’m sick. He doesn’t want you to see that I’m breaking out in sores, that my ankle is ulcerated from this chain. Most of all, he doesn’t want you to see that I’m just as human as you are.’

‘He talks!’ The man sounded more impressed than dismayed.

‘That he does. But you are wiser not to listen to anything he says. He is part dragon, and all know that a dragon can make a man believe anything.’

‘I am not part dragon! I am a man, like you, changed by the favour of a dragon.’ Selden tried to put force behind his shout, but he had no strength.

‘You see how he lies. We do not answer him. To let him engage you in conversation is to fall to his wiles. Doubtless that was how his mother was seduced by a dragon.’ The man cleared his throat. ‘So. You have seen him. My master is reluctant to sell him, but says he will listen to your offer, since you have come so far.’

‘My mother … ? That is preposterous! A wild tale not even a child would believe. And you can’t sell me. You don’t own me!’ Selden lifted a hand and tried to shield his eyes to see the man. It didn’t help. And his words didn’t even provoke a response. Abruptly, he felt foolish. None of this had ever been about the language barrier. It had always been about their unwillingness to see him as anything other than a valuable freak.

They continued their conversation as if he had never spoken.

‘Well, you know I’m only acting as a go-between. I’m not buying him for myself. Your master asks a very high price. The man I represent is wealthy, but the wealthy are stingier than the poor, as the saying goes. If I spend his coin and the dragon-man disappoints him, coin is not all he will demand of me.’

They were silhouettes before his watering eyes. Two men he didn’t know at all, arguing over how much his life was worth. He took a step toward them, dragging his chain through the musty straw. ‘I’m sick! Can’t you see that? Haven’t you got any decency at all? You keep me chained here, you feed me half-rotted meat and stale bread, I never see daylight … You’re killing me. You’re murdering me!’

‘The man I’m representing needs proof before he will spend that much gold. Let me tell you plainly. For the price you are asking, you must let me send him something as a sign of good faith. If he is what you say he is, then your master will get the price he’s asking. And both our masters will be well pleased with us.’

There was a long pause. ‘I will take this matter to my master. Come. Share a drink with us. Bargaining is thirsty work.’

The men were turning. The lantern was swinging as they walked away. Selden took two more steps and found the end of his chain. ‘I have a family!’ he shouted at them. ‘I have a mother! I have a sister and a brother. I want to go home! Please, let me go home before I die here!’

A brief flash of daylight was his only answer. They were gone.

He coughed, clutching at his ribs as he did so, trying to hold himself tight against the hurt. Phlegm came up and he spat it onto the dirty straw. He wondered if there was blood in it. Not enough light to tell. The cough was getting worse, he knew that.

He tottered unsteadily back to the heap of straw where he bedded. He knelt and then lay down on his side. Every joint in his body ached. He rubbed at his gummy eyes and closed them again. Why had he let them bait him into standing up? Why couldn’t he just give up and be still until he died?

‘Tintaglia,’ he said softly. He reached for the dragon with his thoughts. There had been a time when she was aware of him when he sought for her, a time when she had let her thoughts touch his. Then she had found her mate, and since then, he had felt nothing from her. He had near-worshipped her, had basked in her dragon glory and reflected it back to her in his songs.

Songs. How long had it been since he had sung for her, since he had sung anything at all? He had loved her, and believed she had loved him. Everyone had warned him. They’d spoken of the glamour of dragons, of the spell of entrancement they used to ensnare humans but he hadn’t believed them. He had lived to serve her. Worse was that, even as he lay on the dirty straw like a forgotten pet, he knew that if she ever found him again and so much as glanced at him, he’d once more serve her faithfully.

‘It’s what I am now. It’s what she made me,’ he said softly to the darkness.

In the next stall, the two-headed dog whined.

Day the 7th of the Hope Moon

Year the 7th of the Independent Alliance of Traders

From Kim, Keeper of the Birds, Cassarick to Reyall, Acting Keeper of the Birds, Bingtown

Please convey to your masters that I find it extremely distasteful that an underling such as yourself has been given the assignment of conveying these disgusting allegations against me. I believe that being allowed to act as Keeper of the Birds in Erek’s absence has given you an inflated sense of importance that is entirely inappropriate for a journeyman to display to a Master. I suggest further that the Bird Masters of the Bingtown Bird Keepers’ Guild look at your family connections and consider the jealousy your kin bear for me with regards to my promotion to Bird Keeper in Cassarick, for I think there they will find the heart of this vile accusation.

I decline to contact Trader Candral regarding this matter. He has lodged no grievance with our offices, and I am certain that if these complaints were genuine, he would have come to us in person to make his protest. I suspect the fault is not with his wax or seal, but with careless handling of the confidential message cylinders within the Bingtown aviary by those assigned to manage the birds from Trehaug and Cassarick. I believe that would be you, journeyman.

If the Bingtown Bird Keepers’ Guild has a grievance with how official messages are handled in Cassarick, I suggest they send a formal complaint to the Cassarick Traders’ Council and request an investigation. I believe you will find the Council has every confidence in the Cassarick Bird Keepers and that they will decline to pursue such a scurrilous charge against us.

Kim, Keeper of the Birds, Cassarick

CHAPTER TWO
Dragon Battle

The sun had broken through the clouds. The mist that cloaked the hillside meadow by the swift-flowing river was beginning to burn off. Sintara lifted her head to stare at the distant burning orb. Light fell on her scaled hide but little warmth came with it. As the mist rose in trailing tendrils and vanished at the sun’s touch, the cruel wind was driving in thick grey clouds from the west. It would be another day of rain. In distant lands, the delightfully coarse sand would be baking under a hot sun. An ancestral memory of wallowing in that sand and scouring one’s scales until they shone intruded into her mind. She and her fellow dragons should have migrated. They should have risen in a glittering storm of flashing wings and lashing tails and flown to the far southern deserts months ago. Hunting in the rocky uplands that walled the desert was always good. If they were there now it would be a time to hunt, to eat to satiation, to sleep long in the heat-soaked afternoon and then to rise into the bright blue sky, coasting on the hot air currents. Given the right winds, a dragon could hang effortlessly above the land. A queen might do that, might shift her wings and glide and watch the heavier males do battle in the air below her. She imagined herself there, looking down on them as they clashed and spat, as they soared and collided and gripped talons with one another.

At the end of such a battle, a single drake would prevail. His vanquished rivals would return to the sands to bask and sulk, or perhaps flee to the game-rich hills to take out their frustration in a wild killing spree. The lone drake would rise, beating his wings to achieve an altitude equal to the circling, watching females and single out the one he sought to court. Then a different sort of a battle would begin.

Sintara’s gleaming copper eyes were half-lidded, her head lifted on her long and powerful neck, her face turned to the distant sun. A reflex opened her useless blue wings. There were stirrings of longing in her. She felt the mating flush warm the scales of her belly and throat and smelled the scent of her own desire wafting from the glands under her wings. She opened her eyes and lowered her head, feeling almost shame. A true queen worthy of mating would have powerful wings that could lift her above the clouds that now threatened to drench her. Her flight would spread the scent of her musk and inflame every drake for miles with lust. But a true dragon queen would not be marooned here on this sodden riverbank, companioned only by inept flightless males and even more useless human keepers.

She pushed dreams of glorious battles and mating flights away from her. A low rumble of displeasure vibrated her flanks. She was hungry. Where was her Thymara, her keeper? She was supposed to hunt for her, to bring her freshly-killed game. Where was the useless girl?

She felt a sudden violent stir of wind and caught a powerful whiff of drake. Just in time, she closed her half-opened wings.

His clawed feet met the earth and he slid wildly toward her, stopping just short of crashing into her. Sintara reared onto her hind legs and arched her glistening blue neck, straining to her full height. Even so, Kalo still towered over her. She saw his whirling eyes light with pleasure as he realized her disadvantage. The big male had grown and gained muscle and strength since they’d arrived at Kelsingra. ‘My longest flight yet,’ he told her as he shook his wide, dark-blue wings, freeing them of rain and spattering her in the process, then carefully folded and groomed them to his back. ‘My wings grow longer and stronger every day. Soon I shall again be a lord of the skies. What of you, queen? When will you take to the air?’

‘When I please,’ she retorted and turned away. He reeked of lust; the wild freedom of flight was not his focus, but what might occur during a flight. She would not even consider it. ‘And I do not call that flight. You ran down the hill and leaped into the air. Gliding is not flying.’ Her criticism was not strictly fair. Kalo had been aloft for five wing beats before he had landed. Shame vied with fury as she recalled her first flight effort; the keepers had cheered as she leaped and glided. But her wings had lacked the strength to lift her; she had gone down, crashing into the river. She had been tumbled and battered in the current and emerged streaming muddy water and covered with bruises. Don’t recall that ignominy. But never let anyone see you fail again.

A fresh gust of wind brought the rain down. She had come down to the river only to drink; she would return to the feeble shelter of the trees now.

But as she started away from him, Kalo’s head shot out. He clamped his jaws firmly on her neck, just behind her head, where she could not turn to bite him or to spit acid at him. She lifted a front foot to claw at him, but his neck was longer and more powerful than hers. He held her away from his body; her claws slashed fruitlessly at empty air. She trumpeted her fury and he released her, springing back so that her second attack was as useless as her first.

Kalo lifted his wings and opened them wide, ready to bat her aside if she charged at him. His eyes, silver with tendrils of green, whirled with infuriating amusement.

‘You should be trying to fly, Sintara! You need to become a true queen again, ruler of sea and land and sky. Leave these earthbound worms behind and soar with me. We will hunt and kill and fly far away from this cold rain and deep meadows, to the far deserts of the south. Touch your ancestral memories and remember what we are to become!’

Her neck stung where his teeth had scored her flesh, but her pride stung more sharply. Heedless of the danger, she charged at him again, mouth wide and poison sacs working, but with a roar of delight at her response, he leapt over her. As she spun to confront him, she became aware of scarlet Ranculos and azure Sestican lumbering toward them. Dragons were not meant for ground travel. They lollopped along like fat cattle. Sestican’s orange-filigreed mane stood out on the back of his neck. As Ranculos raced toward them, gleaming wings half-spread, he bellowed aggressively. ‘Leave her be, Kalo!’

‘I don’t need your help,’ she trumpeted back as she turned and stalked away from the converging males. Satisfaction that they would fight over her warred with a sense of humiliation that she was not worth their battle. She could not take to the skies in a show of grace and speed; she could not challenge whoever won this foolish brawl with her own agility and fearlessness. A thousand ancestral memories of other courtship battles and mating flights hovered at the edge of her thoughts. She pushed them away. She did not look back at the roars and the sound of furiously slapping wings. ‘I have no need to fly,’ she called disdainfully over her shoulder. ‘There is no drake here worth a mating flight.’

A roar of pain and fury from Ranculos was the only response. All around her, the rainy afternoon erupted into shouts of dismay and shrieked questions from running humans as the dragon keepers poured from their scattered cottages and converged on the battling males. Idiots. They’d be trampled, or worse, if they interfered. These were not matters for humans to intervene in. It galled her when the keepers treated them as if they were cattle to be managed rather than dragons to be served. Her own keeper, trying to hold a ragged cloak closed around her lumpy back and shoulders, ran toward her shouting, ‘Sintara, are you all right? Are you hurt?’

She tossed her head high and half-opened her wings. ‘Do you think I cannot defend myself?’ she demanded of Thymara. ‘Do you think that I am weak and—’

‘Get clear!’ A human shouted the warning and Thymara obeyed it, hunching down and covering the back of her head with her hands.

Sintara snorted in amusement as golden Mercor hurtled past them, wings spread wide, clawed feet throwing up tufts of muddy grass as he barely skimmed the earth. Thymara’s fending hands could not have protected her if the dragon’s barbed wing had so much as brushed her. The mere wind of his passage knocked Thymara to the ground and sent her rolling through the wet meadow grass.

Human shrieks and dragon roars culminated in a full-throated trumpeting from Mercor as he crashed into the knot of struggling males.

Sestican went down, bowled over by the impact. His spread wing bent dangerously as he rolled on it and she heard his huff of pain and dismay. Ranculos was trapped under the flailing Kalo. Kalo attempted to roll and meet Mercor with the longer claws of his powerful hind legs. But Mercor had reared onto his hind legs on top of the heap of struggling dragons. Suddenly he leapt forward and pinned Kalo’s wide-spread wings to the ground with his hind legs. A wild slash from the trapped dragon’s talons scored a gash down Mercor’s ribs, but before he could add another stripe of injury, Mercor shifted his stance higher. Kalo’s head and long neck lashed like a whip but Mercor clearly had the advantage. Trapped beneath the two larger dragons, Sestican roared in helpless fury. A thick stench of male dragon musk rose from the struggle.

A horde of frightened and angry keepers ringed the struggling dragons, shrieking and shouting the names of the combatants or attempting to keep other gawking dragons from joining the fray. The smaller females, Fente and Veras, had arrived and were craning their necks and ignoring their keepers as they ventured dangerously close. Baliper, scarlet tail lashing, prowled the outer edges of the conflict, sending keepers darting for safety, squeaking indignantly at the danger he presented.

The struggle ended almost as abruptly as it had begun. Mercor flung back his golden head and then snapped it forward, jaws wide. Screams from the keepers and startled roars from the watching dragons predicted Kalo’s death by acid spray. Instead, at the last moment, Mercor snapped his jaws shut. He darted his head down and spat, not a mist or a stream, but only a single blot of acid onto Kalo’s vulnerable throat. The blue-black dragon screamed in agony and fury. With three powerful beats of his wings, Mercor lifted off him and alighted a ship’s length away. Blood was running freely from the long gash on his ribs, sheeting down his gold-scaled side. He was breathing heavily, his nostrils flared wide. Colour rippled through his scales and the protective crests around his eyes stood tall. He lashed his tail and the smell of his challenge filled the air.

The moment Mercor had lifted his weight off him, Kalo had rolled to his feet. Snarling his frustration and humiliation, he headed immediately toward the river to wash the acid from his flesh before it could eat any deeper. Carson, Spit’s keeper, ran beside him, shouting at him to stop and let him look at the injury. The black dragon ignored him. Bruised and shaken but not much injured, Ranculos scrambled to his feet and staggered upright. He shook his wings out and then folded them slowly as if they were painful. Then, with what dignity he could muster, he limped away from the trampled earth of the combat site.

Mercor roared after the retreating Kalo. ‘Don’t forget that I could have killed you! Don’t ever forget it, Kalo!’

‘Lizard spawn!’ the dark dragon roared back at him but did not slow his retreat toward the icy waters of the river.

Sintara turned away from them. It was over. She was surprised it had lasted as long as it had. Battle, like mating, was something that dragons did on the wing. Had the males been able to take flight, the contest might have gone on for hours, perhaps the entire day, and left all of them acid-seared and bloodied. For a moment, her ancestral memories of such trials seized her mind and she felt her heart race with excitement. The males would have battled for her regard, and in the end, when only one was the victor, still he would have had to match her in flight and meet her challenge before he could claim the right to mate with her. They would have soared through air, going higher and higher as the drake sought to match her loops and dives and powerful climbs. And if he had succeeded, if he had managed to come close enough to match her flight, he would have locked his body to hers, and as their wings synchronized …

‘SINTARA!’

Mercor’s bellow startled her out of her reflection. She was not the only one who turned to see what the gold drake wanted of her. Every dragon and keeper on the meadow was staring at him. And at her.

The great golden dragon lifted his head and then snapped opened his wings with an audible crack. A fresh wave of his scent went out on the wind. ‘You should not provoke what you cannot complete,’ he rebuked her.

She stared at him, feeling anger flush her colours brighter. ‘It had nothing to do with you, Mercor. Perhaps you should not intrude into things that do not concern you.’

He spread his wings wider still, and lifted his body tall on his powerful hind legs. ‘I will fly.’ He did not roar the words, but even so they still carried clearly through the wind and rain. ‘As will you. And when the time comes for mating battles, I will win. And I will mate you.’

She stared at him, more shocked than she had thought she could be. Unthinkable for a male to make such a blatant claim. She tried not to be flattered that he had said she would fly. When the silence grew too long, when she became aware that everyone was watching her, expecting a response, she felt anger. ‘So say you,’ she retorted lamely. She did not need to hear Fente’s snort of disdain to know that her feeble response had impressed no one.

Turning away from them all, she began stalking back to the forest and the thin shelter of the trees. She didn’t care. She didn’t care what Mercor had said nor that Fente had mocked her. There was none among them worth impressing. ‘Scarcely a proper battle at all,’ she sneered quietly.

‘Was a “proper battle” what you were trying to provoke?’ Her snippy little keeper Thymara was abruptly beside her, trotting to keep up. Her black hair hung in fuzzy, tattered braids, a few still adorned with wooden charms. Her roll down the hill had coated her ragged cloak with dead grass. Her feet were bound up in mismatched rags, the make-shift shoes soled with crudely-tanned deerskin. She had grown thinner of late, and taller. The bones of her face stood out more. The wings that Sintara had gifted her with bounced lightly beneath her cloak as she jogged. Despite the rudeness of her first query, Thymara sounded concerned as she added, ‘Stop a moment. Crouch down. Let me see your neck where he bit you.’

‘He didn’t draw blood.’ Sintara could scarcely believe she was answering such an impudent demand from a mere human.

‘I want to look at it. It looks as if several scales are loosened.’

‘I did nothing to provoke that silly squabble.’ Sintara halted abruptly and lowered her head so that Thymara could inspect her neck. She resented doing it, feeling that she had somehow given way to the human’s domineering manner. Anger simmered in her. Briefly she considered ‘accidentally’ knocking Thymara off her feet with a swipe of her head. But as she felt the girl’s strong hands gently easing her misaligned neck scales back into smoothness, she relented. Her keeper and her clever hands had their uses.

‘None of the scales are torn all the way free, though you may shed some of them sooner rather than later.’

Sintara sensed her keeper’s annoyance as she set her scales to rights. Despite Thymara’s frequent rudeness to Sintara, the dragon knew the girl took pride in her health and appearance. Any insult to Sintara rankled Thymara as well. And she would be aware of her dragon’s mood, too.

As she focused more on the girl, she knew that they shared more than annoyance. The frustration was there as well. ‘Males!’ the girl exclaimed suddenly. ‘I suppose it takes no more to provoke a male dragon to stupidity than it does a human male.’

Sintara’s curiosity was stirred by the comment, though she would not let Thymara know that. She reviewed what she knew of Thymara’s most recent upsets and divined the source of her sour mood. ‘The decision is yours, not theirs. How foolishly you are behaving! Just mate with both of them. Or neither. Show them that you are a queen, not a cow to be bred at the bull’s rutting.’

‘I chose neither,’ Thymara told her, answering the question that the dragon hadn’t asked.

Her scales smoothed, Sintara lifted her head and resumed her trek to the forest’s edge. Thymara hurried to stay beside her, musing as she jogged. ‘I just want to let it alone, to leave things as they’ve always been. But neither of them seems willing to let that happen.’ She shook her head, her braids flying with the motion. ‘Tats is my oldest friend. I knew him back in Trehaug, before we became dragon keepers. He’s part of my past, part of home. But when he pushes me to bed with him, I don’t know if it’s because he loves me, or simply because I’ve refused him. I worry that if we become lovers and it doesn’t work out, I’ll lose him completely.’

‘Then bed Rapskal and be done with it,’ the dragon suggested. Thymara was boring her. How could humans seriously believe that a dragon could be interested in the details of their lives? As well worry about a moth or a fish.

The keeper took the dragon’s comment as an excuse to keep talking. ‘Rapskal? I can’t. If I take him as a mate, I know that would ruin my friendship with Tats. Rapskal is handsome, and funny … and a bit strange. But it’s a sort of strange that I like. And I think he truly cares about me, that when he pushes me to sleep with him, it’s not just for the pleasure.’ She shook her head. ‘But I don’t want it, with either of them. Well, I do. If I could just have the physical part of it, and not have it make everything else complicated. But I don’t want to take the chance of catching a child, and I don’t really want to have to make some momentous decision. If I choose one, have I lost the other? I don’t know what—’

‘You’re boring me,’ Sintara warned her. ‘And there are more important things you should be doing right now. Have you hunted for me today? Do you have meat to bring me?’

Thymara bridled at the sudden change of topic. She replied grudgingly, ‘Not yet. When the rain lets up, I’ll go. There’s no game moving right now.’ A pause, and then she broached another dangerous subject. ‘Mercor said you would fly. Were you trying? Have you exercised your wings today, Sintara? Working on the muscles is the only way that you will ever—’

‘I have no desire to flap around on the beach like a gull with a broken wing. No desire to make myself an object of mockery.’ Even less desire to fail and fall into the icy, swift-flowing river and drown. Or over-estimate her skills and plummet into the trees as Baliper had done. His wings were so swollen that he could not close them, and he’d torn a claw from his left front foot.

‘No one mocks you! Exercising your wings is a necessity, Sintara. You must learn to fly; all of the dragons must. You all have grown since we left Cassarick, and it is becoming impossible for me to kill enough game to keep you well fed, even with the larger game that we’ve found here. You will have to hunt for your own food, and to do that, you must be able to fly. Would not you rather be one of the first dragons to leave the ground than one of the last ones?’

That thought stung. The idea that the smaller females such as Veras or Fente might gain the air before she did was intolerable. It might actually be easier for such stunted and scrawny creatures to fly. Anger warmed her blood and she knew the liquid copper of her eyes would be swirling with emotion. She’d have to kill them, that was all. Kill them before either one could humiliate her.

‘Or you could take flight before they did,’ Thymara suggested steadily.

Sintara snapped her head around to stare at the girl. Sometimes she was able to overhear the dragon’s thoughts. Sometimes she was even impudent enough to answer them.

‘I’m tired of the rain. I want to go back under the trees.’

Thymara nodded and as Sintara stalked off, she followed docilely. The dragon looked back only once.

Down by the river, other keepers were stridently discussing which dragon had started the melee. Carson the hunter had his arms crossed and stood in stubborn confrontation with Kalo. The black dragon was dripping; he’d rinsed Mercor’s acid from this throat, then. Carson’s small silver dragon, Spit, was watching them sullenly from a distance. The man was stupid, Sintara thought. The big blue-black male was not fond of humans to start with: provoked, Kalo might simply snap Carson in two.

Tats was helping Sylve examine the long injury down Mercor’s ribs while his own dragon, Fente, jealously clawed at the mud and muttered vague threats. Ranculos was holding one wing half-opened for his keeper’s inspection. It was likely badly bruised at the very least. Sestican, covered in mud, was dispiritedly bellowing for his keeper but Lecter was nowhere in sight. The squabble was over. For one moment, they had been dragons, vying for the attention of a female. Now they were back to behaving like large cattle. She despised them, and she loathed herself. They weren’t worth her time to provoke. They only made her think of all they were not. All she was not.

If only, she thought, and traced her misfortune back, happenstance after happenstance. If only the dragons had emerged from the metamorphosis fully-formed and healthy. If only they had been in better condition when they cocooned to make the transition from sea serpent to dragon. If only they had migrated home decades ago. If only the Elderlings had not died off, if only the mountain had never erupted and put an end to the world they had once known. She should have been so much more than she was. Dragons were supposed to emerge from their cocoons capable of flight, and take wing to make that first rejuvenating kill. But none of them had. She was like a bright chip of glass, fallen from a gorgeous mosaic of Elderlings and turreted cities and dragons on the wing, to lie in the dirt, broken away from all she that had once been her destiny. She was meaningless without that world.

She had tried to fly, more than once. Thymara need never know of her many private and humiliating failures. It was infuriating that dim-witted Heeby was able to take flight and hunt for herself. Every day, the red female grew larger and stronger, and her keeper Rapskal never tired of singing the praises of his ‘great, glorious girl’ of a dragon. He’d made up a stupid song, more doggerel than poetry, and loudly sang it to her every morning as he groomed her. It made Sintara want to bite his head off. Heeby could preen all she liked when her keeper sang to her. She was still dumber than a cow.

‘The best vengeance might be to learn to fly,’ Thymara suggested again, privy to the feeling rather than the thought.

‘Why don’t you try that yourself?’ Sintara retorted bitterly.

Thymara was silent, a silence that simmered.

The idea came to Sintara slowly. She was startled. ‘What? You have, haven’t you? You’ve tried to fly?’

Thymara kept her face turned away from the dragon as they trudged through the wild meadow and up toward the tree line. Scattered throughout the meadow were small stone cottages, some little more than broken walls and collapsed roofs while others had been restored by the dragon keepers. Once there had been a village here, a place for human artisans to live. They’d plied their trades here, the servant and merchant classes of the Elderlings who had lived in the gleaming city on the far side of the swift-flowing river. She wondered if Thymara knew that. Probably not.

‘You made these wings grow on me,’ Thymara finally replied. ‘If I have to have them, if I have to put up with something that makes it impossible to wear an ordinary shirt, something that lifts my cloak up off my back so that every breeze chills me, then I might as well make them useful. Yes, I’ve tried to fly. Rapskal was helping me. He insists I’ll be able to, one day. But so far all I’ve done is skin my knees and scrape the palms of my hands when I fall. I’ve had no success. Does that please you?’

‘It doesn’t surprise me.’ It did please her. No human should fly when dragons could not! Let her skin her knees and bruise herself a thousand times. If Thymara took flight before she did, the dragon would eat her! Her hunger stirred at the thought and she became sensible. There was no sense in making the girl aware of that, at least not until she’d done her day’s hunting.

‘I’m going to keep trying,’ Thymara said in a low voice. ‘And so should you.’

‘Do as you please and I’ll do the same,’ the dragon replied. ‘And what should please you right now is that you go hunting. I’m hungry.’ She gave the girl a mental push.

Thymara narrowed her eyes, aware that the dragon had used her glamour on her. It didn’t matter. She would still be nagged with an urgent desire to go hunting. Being aware of the source of that suggestion would not make her immune to it.

The winter rains had prompted an explosion of greenery. The tall wet grasses slapped against her legs as they waded through it. They had climbed the slope of the meadow and now the open forest of the hillside beckoned. Beneath the trees, there would be some shelter from the rain, although many of the trees here had lost their foliage. The forest seemed both peculiar and familiar to Sintara. Her own life’s experience had been limited to the dense and impenetrable forest that bordered the Rain Wilds River. Yet her ancestral memories echoed the familiarity of woods such as this. The names of the trees – oak and hickam and birch, alder and ash and goldleaf – came to her mind. Dragons had known these trees, this sort of forest and even this particular place. But they had seldom lingered here in the chill rains of winter. No. For this miserable season, dragons would have flown off to bask in the heat of the deserts. Or they would have taken shelter in the places that the Elderlings created for them, crystal domes with heated floors and pools of steaming water. She turned and looked across the river to fabled Kelsingra. They had come so far, and yet asylum remained out of reach. The swift-flowing river was deep and treacherous. No dragon could swim it. True flight was the only way home.

The ancient Elderling city stood, mostly intact, just as her ancestral memories had recalled it. Even under the overcast, even through the grey onslaught of rain, the towering buildings of black and silver stone gleamed and beckoned. Once, lovely scaled Elderlings had resided there. Friends and servants of dragons, they had dressed in bright robes and adorned themselves with gold and silver and gleaming copper. The wide avenues of Kelsingra and the gracious buildings had all been constructed to welcome dragons as well as Elderlings. There had been a statuary plaza, where the flagstones radiated heat in the winter, though that area of the city appeared to have vanished into the giant chasm that now cleft its ancient roads and towers. There had been baths, steaming vats of hot water where Elderlings and dragons alike had taken refuge from foul weather. Her ancestors had soaked there, not just in hot water, but in copper vats of simmering oils that had sheened their scales and hardened their claws.

And there had been … something else. Something she could not quite recall clearly. Water, she thought, but not water. Something delightful, something that even now sparkled and gleamed and called to her through her dim recollection of it.

‘What are you looking at?’ Thymara asked her.

Sintara hadn’t realized that she had halted to stare across the river. ‘Nothing. The city,’ she said and resumed her walk.

‘If you could fly, you could get across the river to Kelsingra.’

‘If you could think, you would know when to be quiet,’ the dragon retorted. Did the stupid girl not realize how often she thought of that? Daily. Hourly. The Elderling magic of heated tiles might still work. Even if it did not, the standing buildings would provide shelter from the incessant rain. Perhaps in Kelsingra she would feel like a real dragon again rather than a footed serpent.

They reached the edge of the trees. A gust of wind rattled them, sending water spattering down through the sheltering branches. Sintara rumbled her displeasure. ‘Go hunt,’ she told the girl, and strengthened her mental push.

Offended, her keeper turned away and trudged back down the hill. Sintara didn’t bother to watch her go. Thymara would obey. It was what keepers did. It was really all they were good for.

‘Carson!’

The hunter held up a cautioning hand, palm open, toward Sedric. Carson stood his ground, staring up at the blue-black dragon. He was not speaking but had locked gazes with the creature. Carson was not a small man, but Kalo dwarfed him to the size of a toy. A toy the infuriated dragon could trample into the earth, or melt to hollowed bones with a single blast of acid-laced venom. And Sedric would be able to do nothing about it. His heart hammered in his chest and he felt he could not get his breath. He hugged himself, shivering with the chill day and with his fear. Why did Carson have to take such risks with himself?

I will protect you. Sedric’s own dragon, Relpda, nudged him with her blunt nose and her thoughts.

He turned quickly to put a restraining hand on her neck as he tried to force calm on his own thoughts. The little copper female would not stand a chance if she challenged Kalo on Sedric’s behalf. And any challenge to Kalo right now would probably provoke an irrational and violent response. Sedric was not Kalo’s keeper, but he felt the dragon’s emotions. The waves of anger and frustration that radiated from the black dragon would have affected anyone.

‘Let’s step back a bit,’ he suggested to the copper, and pushed on her. She didn’t budge. When he looked at her, her eyes seemed to spin, dark blue with an occasional thread of silver in them. She had decided Kalo was a danger to him. Oh, dear.

Carson was speaking now, firmly, without anger. His muscled arms were crossed on his chest, offering no threat. His dark eyes under his heavy brows were almost kind. The wet wind tugged at his hair and left drops clinging to his trimmed ginger beard. The hunter ignored the wind and rain as he ignored the dragon’s superior strength. He seemed to have no fear of Kalo or the dragon’s suppressed fury. Carson’s voice was deep and calm, his words slow. ‘You need to calm down, Kalo. I’ve sent one of the others to find Davvie. Your own keeper will be here soon, to tend your hurts. If you wish, I will look at them now. But you have to stop threatening everyone.’

The blue-black dragon shifted and scintillations of silver glittered over his scaling in the rain. The colours in his eyes melted and swirled to the green of copper ore; it looked as if his eyes were spinning. Sedric stared at them with fascination tinged with horror. Carson was too close. The creature looked no calmer to him, and if he chose to snap at Carson or spit acid at him, even the hunter’s agility would not be enough to save him from death. Sedric drew breath to plead with him to step back, and then gritted his teeth together. No. Carson knew what he was doing and the last thing he needed now was a distraction from his lover.

Sedric heard running feet behind him and turned to see Davvie pelting toward them as fast as he could. The young keeper’s cheeks were bright red with effort and his hair bounced around his face and shoulders. Lecter trundled along in his wake though the soaked meadow grass, looking rather like a damp hedgehog. The spines on the back of his neck were becoming a mane down his back, twin to the ones on his dragon, Sestican. Lecter could no longer contain them in a shirt. They were blue, tipped with orange, and they bobbed as he tried to keep up with Davvie, panting loudly. Davvie dragged in a breath and shouted, ‘Kalo! Kalo, what’s wrong? I’m here, are you hurt? What happened?’

Lecter veered off, headed toward Sestican. ‘Where were you?’ his dragon trumpeted, angry and querulous. ‘Look, I am filthy and bruised. And you did not attend me.’

Davvie raced right up to his huge dragon with a fine disregard for how angry the beast was. From the moment the boy had appeared, Kalo’s attention had been fixed only on him. ‘Why weren’t you here to attend me?’ the dragon bellowed accusingly. ‘See how I am burned! Your carelessness could have cost me my life!’ The dragon flung up his head to expose the raw circle on this throat where Mercor’s acid had scored him. It was the size of a saucer.

Sedric flinched at sight of the wound, but Davvie went pale as death.

‘Oh, Kalo, are you going to be all right? I’m so sorry! I was around the river bend, checking the fish trap, to see if we’d caught anything!’

Sedric knew about the fish trap. He’d watched Davvie and Carson install it yesterday. The two baskets were fixed on the ends of arms that rotated like a wheel propelled by the current. The baskets were designed to scoop fish from the water and drop them down a chute into a woven holding pen. It had taken Davvie and Carson several days to build it. If it worked, they were going to build more to try to lessen the burden of constantly hunting for food for the dragons.

‘He wasn’t checking the fish trap,’ Carson said in a low voice as he joined Sedric. Kalo had hunkered down and Davvie was making worried sounds as he examined the dragon’s spread wings for any other injury. Lecter, looking guilty, was leading Sestican down to the river to wash him.

Sedric watched the lad surreptitiously adjust his belt buckle. Carson was shaking his head in displeasure but Sedric had to grin. ‘No. They weren’t,’ he concluded.

Carson shot him a look that faded the smile from his face.

‘What?’ Sedric asked, confused by the severity of his expression.

Carson spoke in a low voice. ‘We can’t condone it, Sedric. Both boys have to be more responsible.’

‘We can’t condone that they’re together? How can we condemn it without being hypocrites?’ Sedric felt cut by Carson’s words. Did he expect the boys to conceal that they were infatuated with one another? Did he condemn their openness?

‘That’s not what I mean.’ The larger man put a hand on Sedric’s shoulder and turned him away from Kalo. He spoke quietly. ‘They’re just boys. They like each other, but it’s about physical discovery, not each other. Not like us. Their sort of games can wait until after their chores are done.’ The two men began to trudge up the hill through the soaking grass. Relpda followed them for a few steps and then abruptly turned and headed toward the riverbank.

‘Not like us.’ Sedric repeated the words softly. Carson looked sideways at him and nodded, a small smile curling the corners of his mouth and igniting flames in Sedric’s belly. Sedric hoped that Carson’s direction meant they were bound for their cottage. The small chill structure of bare stone with the flagged floor was little better than a cave, but at least the roof shed rain and the chimney drew well. If they built up a blazing fire in the hearth, it was almost comfortably warm. Almost. He thought of other ways to stay warm there.

As if he could read Sedric’s mind, Carson said, ‘Some chores won’t wait. We should go up to the forest and see if we can find more dry deadfalls. That green wood you were trying to burn last night was all smoke and no heat.’ He glanced back at Davvie and Lecter. Kalo had crouched low and stretched out his neck so the boy could examine the acid scald on his neck. Under the boy’s touch, the great beast had calmed and seemed almost placid.

‘He’s a much better match for Kalo than Greft was,’ Sedric observed.

‘He could be, if he tried a bit harder.’ It was always hard for Carson to praise the lad. He loved Davvie like a son and made a father’s effort to hold him to the highest standards. He looked away, shaking his head. ‘I understand he and Lecter are infatuated with each other but that still doesn’t excuse either of them neglecting their duties. A man tends to his responsibilities first and his pleasures later. And Davvie is old enough now that I expect him to act like a man. The survival of this expedition is going to depend on each of us pulling his fair weight. When spring comes, or when we get fresh supplies, then Davvie can relax a bit and indulge himself. But not until then. Both of them have dragons to see to every day, before they think of anything else.’

Carson intended no rebuke for him with the words, Sedric knew. Nonetheless, there were times when he felt more keenly his own lack of useful skills. As useless as teats on a bull, his father used to say of people like him. It’s not my fault he assured himself. I’m just a fish out of water here. Were I to abruptly transport Carson to the sort of society I was accustomed to in Bingtown, he would be the one to feel useless and ill at ease. Was it truly a fault that Sedric would have been more competent at choosing a series of wines to complement a banquet, or giving a tailor instructions on how a jacket was to be altered rather than swinging an axe to render a dead log into firewood or cutting an animal up into pieces that would fit in a pot? He didn’t think so. He was not a useless or incompetent person. He was simply out of his area of expertise. He looked around himself at the rainy hillside and the looming forest. Far out of his area of expertise.

And weary of it. He thought of Bingtown with longing. The clatter and chatter of the market place, the city’s wide, flagged streets and well-kept manor houses, its friendly taverns and teashops! The open circuit of the market, and the cool shade of the public gardens! What would Jefdin the tailor think to see his best customer in rags? He suddenly longed for mulled wine and spices in a nice warm mug. Oh, what wouldn’t he give for one meal that wasn’t cooked over a hearth fire? One glass of good wine, one piece of bread? Even a bowl of simple hot porridge with currants and honey. Anything that wasn’t game meat or fish or gathered greens. Anything that was the slightest bit sweet! He’d sacrifice anything for one well prepared meal served on a plate at a table with a cloth!

He glanced at Carson walking beside him. His cheeks were ruddy above his carefully trimmed beard, his dark eyes brimming with his concerns. A recent memory intruded. Carson sitting on a low stool, his eyes closed, his expression that of a stroked cat as Sedric used a small comb and tiny scissors to shape his beard to his face. He had been still and obedient, turning his head only as Sedric bade him, rapt as he basked in his attention. To see the powerful man quiescent under his touch had filled Sedric with a sense of mastery. He had trimmed Carson’s wild mane as well, but not too much. Strange to admit that part of the hunter’s attraction for him was his untamed aspect. He smiled to himself, a small shiver of recalled pleasure standing up the hair on his neck and arms. Well, perhaps there was one thing Sedric would not be willing to sacrifice to return to Bingtown!

He contrived to brush shoulders with Carson as they walked. The hunter grinned and immediately threw his arm around Sedric. No hesitation. Sedric’s heart gave a bump. Hest would never have shown him such casual affection in public. Nor in private, if he was truthful. Carson tightened his hug and Sedric leaned into his embrace as they walked. The hunter was solid and muscular; it was like leaning on an oak. Sedric smiled to realize that he thought of his lover in such terms. Maybe he was becoming accustomed to living here in the wilds. Carson’s coarse cloak and his bound hair smelled of woodsmoke and man. Silvery glints of scaling were starting to show at the corner of his eyes. His dragon was changing him. Sedric liked the way it looked.

Carson rubbed his upper arm. ‘You’re cold. Why don’t you have your cloak on?’

Sedric’s original cloak was long gone, eaten by the acid waters of the Rain Wild River. The garment Carson was referring to was a roughly tanned deer hide with the hair still on it. Carson himself had skinned it off the animal, tanned it and cut it to shape. It tied around Sedric’s neck with leather thongs he had sewn onto it. Sedric was accustomed to furs that were soft and lined with fabric. This cloak was slightly stiff, the skin side of it a creamy colour. It crackled when he walked. Deer hair was not fur: it was stiff and bristly. ‘It’s so heavy,’ Sedric replied guiltily. He would not mention that it smelled like, well, like a deer hide.

‘Indeed it is. But it would shed the rain and keep you warmer.’

‘It’s too far to go back for it now.’

‘Yes. But gathering firewood will warm both of us.’

Sedric didn’t reply that he could think of better ways to warm them both. He was not a lazy man, but he had an aversion to the hard physical labour that Carson routinely accepted as his life. Before Alise had kidnapped him on her crazed adventure up the Rain Wild River, Sedric had always lived as befitted a young Bingtown Trader, even if his family had not been all that well-to-do. He’d worked hard, but with his mind, not his back! He’d kept accounts, both for the household and for the many business contracts that Hest negotiated for his family. He had minded Hest’s wardrobe and overseen his social appointments. He had passed Hest’s instructions on to the household staff, and dealt with their complaints and questions. He’d kept track of the arrival and departure dates of the ships in the harbour, making sure that Hest had the pick of incoming cargos and that he was the first to contact new merchants. He had been essential to the smooth running of Hest’s household and business. Essential. Valued.

Then a memory of Hest’s mocking smile confronted and scattered his warm memories of that time. Had any of his life truly been the way he thought it was? he wondered bitterly. Had Hest valued him for his social and organizational skills? Or had he simply enjoyed the use of Sedric’s body, and how well he endured the humiliations that Hest heaped on him? He narrowed his eyes against the sting of the lancing rain. Had his father been right about him? Was he a useless fop, fit only to fill the fine clothes that his employer paid for?

‘Hey. Come back.’ Carson shook his shoulder gently. ‘When you get that look on your face, it bodes no good for either of us. It’s done, Sedric. A long time over and gone. Whatever it was. Let it go and stop tormenting yourself.’

‘I was such a fool.’ Sedric shook his head. ‘I deserve to be tormented.’

Carson shook his head and a touch of impatience came into his voice. ‘Well, then stop tormenting me. When I see that look on your face, I know you’re thinking about Hest.’ He paused suddenly, as if he’d been on the verge of saying something and then changed his mind. After a moment, he said with forced cheer, ‘So. What brought him to mind this time?’

‘I’m not missing him, Carson, if that’s what you think. I’ve no desire to return to him. I’m more than content with you. I’m happy.’

Carson squeezed his shoulder again. ‘But not so happy that you can stop thinking of Hest.’ He tipped his head and looked at him quizzically. ‘I don’t think he treated you well. I don’t understand his hold on you.’

Sedric shook his head as if he could shake all memories of Hest out of his mind. ‘It’s hard to explain him. He’s very charismatic. He gets what he wants because he truly believes he deserves it. When something goes wrong, he never takes the blame as his own. He puts it on someone else, and then just steps away from whatever the disaster was. It always seemed to me that Hest could just step away from anything terrible that happened, even if he caused it. Whenever it seemed that he would finally have to face the consequences of what he did, some other passage would suddenly open for him.’ His voice ran down. Carson’s dark eyes were on him, trying to understand.

‘And that fascinates you still?’

‘No! At the time, it always seemed as if he had extraordinary luck. Now, when I look back, I see him as being very good at shifting the blame. And I let him. Often. So I’m not really thinking of Hest. I’m thinking about my life back in Bingtown, about who he made me … or rather who I let myself become.’ Sedric shrugged. ‘I’m not proud of who I became when I was with Hest. Not proud of things I planned to do, or the ones I did. But in some ways, I’m still that person. And I don’t know how to change.’

Carson gave him a sideways glance, his smile broad. ‘Oh, you’ve changed. Trust me on that, laddie. You’ve changed quite a bit.’

They’d reached the eaves of the forest. The bare-leaved trees at the outer edges did little to break the incessant rain. There were evergreens a bit higher up the hill, offering more shelter, but there were more dead and fallen branches for firewood here.

Carson halted near a grove of ash trees. He produced two long leather straps, each with a loop at the end. Sedric took his, muffling a sigh. He reminded himself of two things: when he worked, he did stay warmer, and when he kept pace with Carson, he gained more respect for himself. Be a man, he told himself, and shook the strap out into a loop on the ground as Carson had taught him. Carson had already begun to gather faggots and place them on the strap. The big man sometimes cracked a branch over his thigh to break it down to a manageable size. Sedric had tried that; it left remarkable bruises on him, ones that made Carson wince just to look at. He hadn’t attempted it since then.

‘I need to come back with the axe and take down a couple of those fir trees. Big ones. We can fell them and let them dry for a season, and next year we’ll chop them up and have some good long-burning logs. Something more substantial than these, something that will burn all night.’

‘That would be good,’ Sedric agreed without enthusiasm. More back-breaking work. And thinking about firewood for next year made him realize that next year he’d probably still be here. Still living in a cottage, eating meat cooked over a fire, and wearing Sa knew what for clothes. And the year after. And the year after. Would he spend his life here, grow old here? Some of the other keepers had said that the changes the dragons were putting them through would make them into Elderlings, with vastly extended life spans. He glanced at the fish-fine scaling on the back of his wrists. One hundred years here? Living in a little cottage and caring for his eccentric dragon. Would that be his life? Once Elderlings had been legendary creatures to him, elegant and lovely beings that lived in wondrous cities full of magic. The Elderling artefacts that the Rain Wilders had discovered as they dug up the buried cities had been mystical: jewels that gleamed with their own light, and perfume gems each with their own sweet scent. Carafes that chilled whatever was put into them. Jidzin, the magical metal that woke to light at a touch. Wonderful wind chimes that played endlessly varying harmonies and tunes. Stone that held memories that one could share by touching … so many amazing things had belonged to the Elderlings. But they were long gone from the world. And if Sedric and the other keepers were to be their heirs, they would indeed be the poor branch of the family, allied with dragons that could scarcely fly and bereft of Elderling magic. Like the crippled dragons of this generation, the Elderlings they created would be poor and stunted things, eking out an existence in primitive surroundings.

A gust of wind shook down a shower of drops from the naked tree branches above him. He brushed them off his trousers with a sigh. The cloth had worn thin and the cuffs were frayed to dangling threads. ‘I need new trousers.’

Carson reached out a callused hand to rumple his wet hair. ‘You need a hat, too,’ he observed casually.

‘And what shall we make that out of? Leaves?’ Sedric tried to sound amused rather than bitter. Carson. He did have Carson. And would not he rather live in a primitive world with Carson than in a Bingtown mansion without him?

‘No. Bark.’ Carson sounded pragmatic. ‘If we can find the right sort of tree. There was one merchant in Trehaug that used to beat tree bark into fibres and then weave them. She treated some of them with pitch to make them waterproof. She made hats and I think cloaks. I never bought one, but given our circumstances now, I’m ready to try anything. I don’t think I’ve a whole shirt or pair of trousers left to my name.’

‘Bark,’ Sedric echoed gloomily. He tried to imagine what such a hat would look like and decided he’d rather go bareheaded. ‘Maybe Captain Leftrin can bring fabric back from Cassarick. I think I can manage with what I’ve got until then.’

‘Well, we’ll have to, so it’s good that you think we can.’ Such a remark from Hest would have been scathing sarcasm. From Carson, it was shared amusement at the hardships they would endure together.

For a moment they both fell silent, musing. Carson had amassed a substantial bundle of wood. He pulled the strap tight around the sticks and hefted it experimentally. Sedric added a few more sticks to his, and regarded the pile with dread. The bundle was going to be heavy and the sticks would poke him and his back would ache tonight. Again. And here came Carson with more sticks, helpfully increasing the size of his pile. Sedric tried to think of something positive. ‘But when Leftrin returns from Cassarick, won’t he be bringing us more clothing in his supplies?’

Carson added the sticks he’d brought to the stack and wrapped the strap around it experimentally. He spoke as he tightened it. ‘A lot will depend on if the Council gives him all the money they owe him. I expect they’ll drag their feet. Even if they pay him, what he can bring back is going to be limited to what he can buy in Cassarick and maybe in Trehaug. Food will come first, I think. Then supplies like tar and lamp oil and candles and knives and hunting arrows. All the things that help us survive on our own. Blankets and fabric and suchlike will come last. Woven goods are always dear in Cassarick. No grazing lands in the swamps, so no sheep for wool. These meadows are one reason Leftrin was so excited about putting in an order for livestock from Bingtown. But we can expect livestock to take months to arrive and Tarman will have to make a return trip for them.’

Captain Leftrin had gathered them for a meeting on the Tarman a few nights previously. He’d announced that he’d be making a run back down the river to Cassarick and Trehaug to buy as many supplies as they could afford. He’d report to the Rain Wild Council that they had accomplished their undertaking and he’d collect the monies owed them. If keepers wanted anything special from Cassarick, they could let him know and he’d try to get it for them. Two of the keepers had promptly said that their earnings should be sent to their families. Others wanted to send messages to kin. Rapskal had announced that he wished to spend all his money on sweets, sweets of any kind.

The laughter hadn’t died down until Leftrin had asked if anyone wanted to be taken back to Trehaug. There had been a brief silence then as the dragon keepers had exchanged puzzled glances. Go back to Trehaug? Abandon the dragons they had bonded with, and return to their lives as outcasts among their own people? If they had been shunned for their appearances when they left Trehaug, what would the other Rain Wilders think of them now? Their time among the dragons had not lessened their strangeness. Quite the opposite: they had grown more scales, more spines, and in the case of young Thymara, a set of gauzy wings. The dragons seemed to be guiding their changes now, so that they were more aesthetically pleasing. Even so, most of the keepers had clearly left humanity behind. None of them could return to the lives they had known.

Alise had not bonded to a dragon, and remained very human in appearance, but Sedric knew she would not return. There was nothing for her in Bingtown but disgrace. Even if Hest were willing to take her back, she would not return to that loveless sham of a marriage. Ever since he had confessed his own relationship with Hest to her, she had regarded her marriage contract with the wealthy Trader as void. She’d stay here in Kelsingra and wait for her grubby river captain to return. And even if Sedric could not understand what attracted her to the man, he was willing to admit that she seemed happier living in a stone hut with Leftrin than she had ever been in Hest’s mansion.

And for himself?

He glanced over at Carson and for a moment just looked at him. The hunter was a big, bluff man, well-kept in his own rough way. Stronger than Hest could ever be. Gentler than Hest would ever be.

When he thought about it, he was happier living in a stone hut with Carson than he had ever been in Hest’s mansion. No deceit left in his life. No pretence. And a little copper dragon who loved him. His longing for Bingtown faded.

‘What are you smiling about?’

Sedric shook his head. Then he answered truthfully. ‘Carson, I’m happy with you.’

The smile that lit the hunter’s face at the simple words was honest joy. ‘And I’m happy with you, Bingtown boy. And we’ll both be happier tonight if we have this firewood stacked and ready.’ Carson stooped, seized the strap of his bundle, and heaved it up onto his shoulder. He came back to his feet easily and waited for Sedric to do the same.

Sedric copied him, grunting as he hefted his own bundle onto his shoulder. He managed to remain upright only after taking two staggering steps to catch his balance. ‘Sa’s breath, it’s heavy!’

‘Yes it is.’ Carson grinned at him. ‘It’s twice what you could carry a month ago. Proud of you. Let’s go.’

Proud of him.

‘I’m proud of myself,’ Sedric muttered, and fell into step behind him.

Day the 7th of the Hope Moon

Year the 7th of the Independent Alliance of Traders

From Detozi, Keeper of the Birds, Trehaug to Reyall, Acting Keeper of the Birds, Bingtown

Dear nephew, greetings and good wishes to you.

Erek and I both counsel you to keep your temper in this matter. Do not let Kim provoke you to anger or to accusations we cannot prove. This is not the first time we have had unpleasant correspondence with him. I still believe that he rose to his post by bribery but as that would indicate he has friends on the Cassarick Council who confirmed his promotion, taking a complaint there may get us no results.

I still know a number of his journeymen, for they began their apprenticeships here with me in Trehaug. I will make a few quiet enquiries among them. In the meantime, you have been wise to pass the message on to your masters and defer the handling of it to them. Until your Master status is confirmed, it is difficult for you to speak to Kim as an equal. Both Erek and I question the wisdom that assigned this difficult question to you.

For now, you have done all that can be expected of you in your position. Erek and I continue to have the highest confidence in your bird-handling abilities.

In kinder news, the two speckled swift birds that you sent to us as a wedding gift have selected mates here and begun to breed. I look forward to shipping some of their youngsters to you soon, so that we may time their return flights. I have great enthusiasm for this project.

Erek and I are still discussing which of us will relocate permanently; it is a difficult question for us. At our ages, we desire to be wed quickly and quietly, but neither of our families seemed so inclined. Pity us!

With affection and respect,

Aunt Detozi

CHAPTER THREE
Pathways

Thymara had lived all her life in the Rain Wilds, but she had never experienced rain like this. In her childhood in Trehaug and Cassarick, the immense trees that populated the banks of the Rain Wild River had spread their many layers of canopy and shade over those tree-house cities. The driving rains of winter had been thwarted and diverted by the infinitude of leaves between her and the sky. Of course, they had blocked the direct sunlight as well, but Thymara had felt differently about that. If she wanted sunlight, she could climb for it. She could not recall that she had ever wished to feel the full onslaught of a rain storm.

Here, she had no choice. The meadow that edged the river was not like the shadowy undergrowth of the Rain Wilds. Thick grasses grew hip- to shoulder-deep. Rather than being swampy, the earth was firm under her feet, and salted with rocks, a bewildering array of hard chunks of different textures and colours. She often wondered where they all came from and how they had come to be here. Today the wind swept across the naked lands and slapped the unimpeded rain into her face and down her collar. Her worn clothes, weakened by too-frequent contact with the acidic waters of the Rain Wild River, were no protection. Limp and soaked, they clung to her skin. And she could look forward to being cold and wet all day. She rubbed her red, chilled hands together. It was hard enough to hunt well with the battered assortment of gear she had left. Numbed hands only made it harder.

She heard Tats coming before he called to her: the wet grass slapping against his legs and his hard breathing as he ran up behind her. She did not turn to him until he breathlessly called to her, ‘Going hunting? Want some help?’

‘Why not? I could use someone to carry my kill back to the dragons.’ She didn’t mention what they both knew: that Carson didn’t like any of them hunting alone. He claimed to have seen signs of big predators, ones that might be large enough to attack a human. ‘Large game usually attracts large predators,’ he had said. ‘When you hunt, take a partner.’ It was not so much that Carson had authority over them as that he had experience.

Tats grinned at her, his teeth white in his finely-scaled face. ‘Oh. So you don’t think I’m capable of bringing down meat that you’d have to help me drag back?’

She grinned back. ‘You’re a good enough hunter, Tats. But we both know I’m better.’

‘You were born to it. Your father taught you from the time you could teeter along a tree branch. I think I’m pretty good, for someone who came to it later.’ He fell into step beside her. It was a bit awkward on the narrow trail. He bumped elbows with her as they walked, but he neither moved ahead of her nor fell back. As they entered the eaves of the forest, the meadow grasses grew shallower and then gave way to a layer of leaf mould and low-growing bushes. The trees cut the wind, for which Thymara was grateful. She bobbed her head in acceptance of Tats’s compliment.

‘You’re a lot better than when we left Trehaug. And I think you may adapt to this ground hunting faster than I will. This place is so different from home.’

‘Home,’ he said, and she could not tell if the word was bitter or sweet to him. ‘I think this is home now,’ he added, startling her.

She gave him a sideways glance as they continued to push forward through the brush. ‘Home? Forever?’

He thrust out his arm toward her and pushed up his sleeve, baring his scaled flesh. ‘I can’t imagine going back to Trehaug. Not like this. You?’

She didn’t need to flex her wings, nor look at the thick black claws she’d had since birth. ‘If acceptance means home, then Trehaug was never home for me.’

She pushed regrets and thoughts of Trehaug aside. It was time to hunt. Sintara was hungry. Today Thymara wanted to find a game trail, a fresh one they hadn’t hunted before. Until they struck one, it would be hard going. They were both breathing hard, but Tats was less winded than he would have been when they first left Trehaug. Life on the Tarman expedition had muscled and hardened all of them, she thought approvingly. And all of the keepers had grown, the boys achieving growth spurts that were almost alarming. Tats was taller now and his shoulders broader. His dragon was changing him, too. He alone of the keepers had been fully human in appearance when they had left Trehaug. Offspring of the freed slave population that had immigrated to Trehaug during the war with Chalced, his slavery as an infant had been clearly marked on his face with his former owner’s tattoo. A spider web had been flung across his left cheek, while a small running horse had been inked beside his nose. Those had changed as his dragon had begun to scale him. The tattoos were stylized designs now, scales rather than ink under skin. His dark hair and dark eyes remained the same as they had always been, but she suspected that some of his height was due to his transformation to Elderling rather than being natural growth. His fingernails gleamed as green as Fente, his ill-tempered little queen dragon. When the light struck his skin, it woke green highlights on his scaling. He was leaf shadow and pine needle, the greens of her fores … She reined in her thoughts.

‘So. You think you’ll live out your life here?’ It was a strange concept to her. She’d been at a bit of a loss since they’d achieved their goal of finding the city. When they all left Trehaug, they had signed contracts, acknowledging that their goal was to settle the dragons upriver. Finding the legendary city of Kelsingra had scarcely been mentioned. She’d taken the job to escape her old life. She’d thought no further in her plans than that. Now she ventured to picture herself living here forever. Never facing again the people who had made her an outcast.

The other half of that image was never going home again. She hadn’t liked her mother; and it had been mutual. But she had been very close to her father. Would she never see him again? Would he never know she’d achieved her goal? No, that was a ridiculous thought. Captain Leftrin was going to make a supply run back to Cassarick. Once he arrived there, the news of their find would swarm out like gnats to every ear in the Rain Wilds. Her father would soon hear of it. Would he come here to see for himself? Would she, perhaps, go home to visit him? A night ago, at the meeting, Leftrin had asked if anyone wanted to go back to the city. A silence had fallen after his query. The keepers had looked at one another. Leave their dragons? Go back to Trehaug, to return to their lives as pariahs there? No. For the others, the answer had been easy.

It had been less easy for her. There were times when she wanted to leave her dragon. Sintara was not the most endearing creature in the world. She ordered Thymara about, exposed her to danger for her own amusement, and once had nearly drowned her in the river in her haste to get a fish. Sintara had never apologized for that. The dragon was as sarcastic and cynical as she was magnificent. But even if Thymara was considering abandoning her dragon, she did not want to get back on the Tarman and go downriver. She was still sick of being on the barge and of the endless journeying in close quarters. Going back to Trehaug with Leftrin would mean leaving all her friends, and never knowing what they discovered in the Elderling city. So for now she’d stay here, to be with her friends and continue her tasks as a hunter for the dragons until Leftrin returned with fresh supplies. And after that? ‘Do you plan to live here forever?’ she asked Tats again when she realized he hadn’t answered her first question.

He replied quietly, in keeping with their soft tread through the forest. ‘Where else could we go?’ He made a small gesture at her and then at his own face. ‘Our dragons have marked us as theirs. And while Fente is making more progress toward flying than Sintara is, I don’t think either queen will be self-sufficient soon. Even if they could hunt to feed themselves, they’d still want us here with them, for grooming and companionship. We’re Elderlings now, Thymara. Elderlings have always lived alongside dragons. And this is where the dragons are staying. So, yes, I suppose I’m here for the rest of my life. Or for as long as Fente is.’

He lifted a hand and pointed silently in what he thought was a better direction. She decided to agree with him and took the lead. He spoke from behind her as they slipped single-file through the forest. ‘Are you saying what I think you’re saying? Are you truly considering going back to Trehaug? Do you think that’s even possible for ones like us? I know that Sintara doesn’t always treat you well. But where else can you live now? You have wings now, Thymara. I can’t see you climbing and running through the tree tops like you used to. Anywhere you go, people are going to stare at you. Or worse.’

Thymara folded her wings more tightly to her body. Then she frowned. She hadn’t been aware she was going to do that. The foreign appendages were becoming more and more a part of her. They still made her back ache and annoyed her daily when she tried to make her worn clothing fit around them. But she moved them now without focusing on the task.

‘They’re beautiful,’ Tats said as if he could hear her thoughts. ‘They’re worth anything you have to endure for them.’

‘They’re useless,’ Thymara retorted, trying not to let his compliment please her. ‘I’ll never fly. They’re like a mockery.’

‘No. You’ll never fly, but I still think they’re beautiful.’

Now his agreement that she could never fly stung more sharply than his compliment could soothe. ‘Rapskal thinks I’ll fly,’ she retorted.

Tats sighed. ‘Rapskal thinks that he and Heeby will visit the moon some day. Thymara, I think your wings would have to grow much bigger before you could fly. So big that perhaps you’d be bent over by the weight of them when you walked. Rapskal doesn’t stop to think how things really work. He is full of his wishes and dreams, now more than ever. And we both know he wants you and will say anything to you that will win your favour.’

She glanced back at him, a sour smile twisting her lips. ‘Unlike you,’ she observed.

He grinned at her, his dark eyes alight with challenge. ‘You know I want you. I’m honest about that. I’m always honest with you, Thymara. I think you should appreciate the truth from a man who respects your intelligence rather than preferring a crazy man full of wild compliments.’

‘I value your honesty,’ she said and then bit her tongue before she could remind him that he hadn’t always been so honest with her. He hadn’t told her that he was mating with Jerd. But neither had Rapskal admitted it to her. Of course, in Rapskal’s case, he hadn’t really concealed it from her. He simply hadn’t thought it all that important.

After all, most of the male keepers seemed to have enjoyed Jerd’s favours. And probably continued to, for all Thymara knew. The question came back to her. Why was it so important to her? Tats wasn’t with Jerd any more. He didn’t seem to attach any real importance to what he had done. So why did it matter so much to her?

Thymara slowed her pace. They were approaching an opening in the forest and where the trees thinned there was more light ahead. She made a motion to Tats to be quiet and slow his pace, took the best of her unsatisfactory arrows and set it to the bow. Time to move her eyes more than her body. She set her shoulder to a tree to steady her stance and began a slow survey of the forest meadow before them.

She could focus her eyes but not her unruly thoughts. Jerd had been very quick to cast off the rules of their Rain Wilds upbringing. Girls such as she and Jerd and Sylve were not allowed to take husbands. All knew that Rain Wild children who were scaled or clawed at birth would likely not grow to adulthood. They were not worth the resources it would take to raise them, for even if they lived, they seldom bore viable children. Those who tried usually died in labour, leaving the monsters that survived the births to be exposed. Husbands were forbidden to those strongly Touched by the Rain Wilds, as deeply forbidden as mating outside the marriage bed was forbidden to all Rain Wilders. But Jerd had chosen to ignore both those rules. Jerd was lovely, with her fair hair and piercing eyes and lithe body. She had chosen which keepers she wished to bed, and then picked them off one at a time like a cat at a mouse nest, and with as little compunction about the outcome of her appetite. Even when some of the youths came to blows over her, she seemed to accept it as her due. Thymara had been torn between envy for the freedom Jerd had claimed and fury at the swathe of emotional discord she cut through the company.

Eventually, she’d paid the price, one that Thymara did not like to remember. When her unlikely pregnancy ended in a premature birth, Thymara had been one of the women to attend her. She had seen the tiny body of the fish-girl before they delivered the corpse to Veras, Jerd’s dragon. It was strange to think that Thymara had taken a lesson from that, but Jerd had seemed unaffected by it. Thymara had refrained from sharing her body with any of the keepers, while Jerd continued to take her pleasure where ever she pleased. It made no sense. Some days she resented Jerd’s stupidity that could bring trouble for all of them; but more often she envied how the other girl had seized her freedom and her choices and seemed not to care what anyone else thought of her.

Freedom and choices. She could seize the one and make the other. ‘I’m staying,’ she said quietly. ‘Not for my dragon. Not even for my friends. I’m staying here for me. To make a place where I do belong.’

Tats looked over at her. ‘Not for me?’ he asked without guile.

She shook her head. ‘Honesty,’ she reminded him quietly.

He glanced away from her. ‘Well, at least you didn’t say you were staying for Rapskal.’ Then, quite suddenly, Tats made a sound, a hoarse intake of breath. A moment later Thymara whispered on a sigh, ‘I see him.’

The animal that was moving cautiously from the perimeter of the forest and into the open meadow was magnificent. Thymara was slowly becoming accustomed to the great size that the hoofed creatures of this dry forest could attain. Even so, this was the largest she had seen yet. She could have slung a sleeping net between the reaches of his two flat-pronged antlers. They were not the tree-branch-like horns she had seen on the other deer of this area. These reminded her of hands with wide-spread fingers. The creature that bore them was worthy of such a massive crown. His shoulders were massive, and a large hummock of meaty flesh rode them. He paced like a rich man strolling through a market, setting one careful foot down at a time. His large, dark eyes swept the clearing once, and then he dismissed his caution. Thymara was not surprised. What sort of predator could menace a beast of that size? She drew the bowstring taut and held her breath, but her hope was small. At best, she could probably deliver a flesh wound through that thick hide. If she injured him sufficiently or made him bleed enough, she and Tats could track him to his death place. But this would not be a clean kill for any of them.

She gritted her teeth. This could very well take all day, but the amount of meat would be well worth it. One more pace and she would have a clear shot at him.

A scarlet lightning bolt fell from the sky. The impact of the red dragon hitting the immense deer shook the earth. Thymara’s startled response was to release her arrow: it shot off in wobbly flight and struck nothing. In the same instant, there was a loud snap as the deer’s spine broke. It bellowed in agony, a sound cut short as the dragon’s jaws closed on the deer’s throat. Heeby jerked her prey off the ground and half-sheared the deer’s head from his neck. Then she dropped it before lunging in to rip an immense mouthful of skin and gut from the deer’s soft belly. She threw her head back and gulped the meat down. Dangling tendrils of gut stretched between her jaws and her prey.

‘Sweet Sa have mercy!’ Tats sighed. At his words, the dragon turned sharply toward them. Her eyes glittered with anger and spun scarlet. Blood dripped from her bared teeth.

‘Your kill,’ Tats assured her. ‘We’re leaving now.’ He seized Thymara by the upper arm and pulled her back into the shelter of the forest.

She still gripped her bow. ‘My arrow! That was the best one I had. Did you see where it went?’

‘No.’ There was a world of denial in Tats’ single word. He hadn’t seen it fly and he wasn’t interested in finding it. He pulled her deeper into the forest and then started to circle the meadow. ‘Damn her!’ he said quietly. ‘That was a lot of meat.’

‘Can’t blame her,’ Thymara pointed out. ‘She’s just doing what a dragon does.’

‘I know. She’s just doing what a dragon does, and how I wish Fente would do it also.’ He shook his head guiltily at his own words, as if shamed to find fault with his dragon. ‘But until she and Sintara get off the ground, we’re stuck with providing meat for them. So we’d best get hunting again. Ah. Here we are.’

He’d struck the game trail that had brought the big buck to the forest meadow. Reflexively, Thymara cast her gaze upward. But the trees here were not the immense giants that she was accustomed to. At home, she would have scaled a tree and then moved silently from limb to reaching limb, travelling unseen from tree to tree as she stalked the game trail. She would have hunted her prey from above. But half these trees were bare of leaves in the winter, offering no cover. Nor did the branches reach and intermingle with their neighbours as they did in her Rain Wild home. ‘We’ll have to hunt on foot, and quietly,’ Tats answered her thoughts. ‘But first, we’ll have to get away from Heeby’s kill site. Even I can smell death.’

‘Not to mention hear her,’ Thymara answered. The dragon fed noisily, crunching bones and making sounds of pleasure with each tearing bite. As they both paused, she gave a sudden snarl, like a cat playing with dead prey; a large cracking sound followed it.

‘Probably the antlers,’ Thymara said.

Tats nodded. ‘I’ve never seen a deer that big.’

‘I’ve never seen any animal that big, except dragons.’

‘Dragons aren’t animals,’ he corrected her. He was leading and she was following. They trod lightly and spoke softly.

She chuckled quietly. ‘Then what are they?’

‘Dragons. The same way that we aren’t animals. They think, they talk. If that’s what makes us not animals, then dragons are not animals, too.’

She was quiet for a time, mulling it over. She wasn’t sure she agreed. ‘Sounds like you’ve given this some thought.’

‘I have.’ He ducked low to go under an overhanging branch and she copied him. ‘Ever since Fente and I bonded. By the third night, I was wondering, what was she? She wasn’t my pet, and she wasn’t like a wild monkey or a bird. Not like the tame monkeys that a few of the pickers used to go after high fruit. And I wasn’t her pet or her servant, even if I was doing a lot of things for her. Finding her food, picking vermin away from her eyes, cleaning her wings.’

‘Are you sure you’re not her servant?’ Thymara asked with a sour smile. ‘Or her slave?’

He winced at the word and she reminded herself whom she was talking to. He’d been born a slave. His mother had been enslaved as punishment for her crimes, so when he was born, he was born a slave. He might have no memory of that servitude, for he had been a very small child when they escaped it. But he’d grown up with the marks on his face, and the knowledge that many people thought differently of him as a result.

They had come to a low stone wall, grown over with vines. Beyond it, several small huts had collapsed on their own foundations. Trees grew in and around them. Thymara eyed them thoughtfully but Tats pressed on. Ruins in the forest were too common even to comment on. If Sintara were not so hungry, Thymara would have poked around in the shells looking for anything useful. A few of the keepers had found tool parts, hammer heads, axe bits and even a knife blade in the debris of some of the collapsed huts. Some of the tools had been of Elderling make, still holding an edge after all the years. One collapsed table had held cups and the remains of broken plates. Whatever had ended Kelsingra had ended it swiftly. The inhabitants had not carried their tools and other possessions away. Who knew what she might find buried in the rubble? But her dragon’s hunger pressed on her mind like a knife at her back. She’d have to come back later when she had more time. If Sintara ever let her have time to herself.

Tats’s next words answered her question and her thoughts.

‘I’m not her slave because I don’t do those things the way a slave would do them. At first it seemed almost like she was my child or something. I took pride in making her happy and seeing how pretty I could make her. It was really satisfying to put meat or a big fish in front of her and feel how good it made her feel to eat.’

‘Glamour,’ Thymara said bitterly. ‘We all know about dragon glamour. Sintara has used it on me more than once. I find myself doing something because I think I really want to do it. Then, when I’ve finished, I realize that it wasn’t my desire at all. It was just Sintara pushing me, making me want to do whatever she wants me to do.’ Just the thought of how the big blue queen could manipulate her made her want to grind her teeth.

‘I know Sintara does that to you. I’ve seen it happen a few times. We’ll be in the middle of talking about something, something important, and suddenly you stop even looking at me and say that you have to go hunting right away.’

Thymara kept a guilty silence. She didn’t want to tell him he was mistaken, that going hunting was her best excuse for avoiding him whenever their conversations became too intense.

Tats seemed unaware of her lack of assent. ‘But Fente doesn’t do that to me. Well, hardly ever. I think she loves me, Thymara. The way she’s changing me, being so careful about it. And after I’ve fed her and groomed her, sometimes she just wants me to stay right there with her and keep her company. Because she enjoys my company. That’s something I’ve never had before. My mom was always asking the neighbours to watch me when I was little. And when she killed that man, she just took off. I still think it was an accident, that she only meant to rob him. Maybe she thought she’d just have to hide for a short time. Maybe she meant to come back for me. She never did. When she knew she was in trouble, she just ran away and left me to whatever might happen to me. But Fente wants me to be with her. Maybe she doesn’t really “love” me, but she sure wants me around.’ He gave a half shrug as he walked, as if she would think him sentimental. ‘The only other one who ever seemed to like me was your father, and even he always kept a little distance between us. I know he didn’t like me spending so much time with you.’

‘He was afraid of what our neighbours might think. Or my mother. The rules were strict, Tats. I wasn’t supposed to let anyone court me. Because it was forbidden for me to get married. Or to have any child. Or to even take a lover.’

Tats gestured in wonder at the antler scores on a tree they passed. The deer that had done it must have been just as immense as the one Heeby had just killed. She touched them with a finger. Antler scores? Or claw marks? No, she couldn’t even imagine a tree cat that large.

‘I knew his rules for you. And for a long time, I didn’t even think of you that way. I wasn’t that interested in girls then. I just envied what you had, a home and parents and a regular job and regular meals. I wished I could have it, too.’

He paused at a split in the game trail and raised an eyebrow at her.

‘Go left. It looks more travelled. Tats, my home was not as wonderful as you thought it was. My mother hated me. I shamed her.’

‘I think … well, I’m not sure she hated you. I think maybe the neighbours made her ashamed of wanting to love you. But even if she did hate you, she never left you. Or threw you out.’ He sounded almost stubborn in his insistence.

‘Except that first time when she gave me to the midwife to expose,’ Thymara pointed out bitterly. ‘My father was the one that brought me back and said he was going to give me a chance. He forced me on her.’

Tats was unconvinced. ‘And I think that’s what really shamed her. Not what you were, but that she hadn’t stood up to the midwife and said she was keeping you, claws and all.’

‘Maybe,’ Thymara replied. She didn’t want to think about it. Useless to think about it now, so far away from it in both time and place. It wasn’t as if she could go and ask her mother what she had felt. She knew her father had loved her, and she’d always hold that knowledge close. But she also knew he had agreed with the rules that said she must never have a lover or a husband, never produce a child. Every time she thought of crossing that boundary, she felt she was betraying him and what he had taught her. He had loved her. He’d given her rules to keep her safe. Could she be wiser than he was in this matter?

It seemed as if it should be her decision. Actually, yes, it was her decision. But if she decided her father was wrong, if she decided she was free to take a mate, did that somehow damage her love for him? His love for her? She knew, without doubt, that he would disapprove of her even considering such a thing.

And even at this distance, his disapproval stung. Perhaps more so because she was so far from home and alone. What would he expect of her? Would he be disappointed if he knew how much kissing and touching she’d indulged in with Tats?

He would. She shook her head and Tats glanced back at her. ‘What is it?’

‘Nothing. Just thinking.’

But as she said it, she became aware of a rhythmic pounding. Something was running, with no effort at stealth, coming up the trail behind them.

‘What is that?’ Tats asked and then glanced at the trees nearby. She knew what he was thinking. If they had to take refuge, climbing a tree might be their best hope.

‘Two legs,’ she said abruptly, surprising even herself that she had deduced that from the sounds.

An instant later, Rapskal came into view. ‘There you are!’ he shouted merrily. ‘Heeby said you were nearby.’

He was grinning, full of joy at finding them. Full of pleasure in life itself, as he always was. Thymara could seldom look at Rapskal without returning that smile. He’d changed a great deal since they had left Trehaug. The boyishness of his face had been planed away by hardship and the approach of manhood. He’d shot up, taller than anyone should grow in a matter of months. Like her, he had been born marked by the Rain Wilds. But since their expedition had begun, he’d grown lean and lithe. His scaling was unmistakably scarlet now, to complement Heeby’s hide. His eyes had always been unusual, a very pale blue. But now the lambent blue glow that some Rain Wilders acquired with age gleamed constantly in them, and the soft blue sometimes had the hard silver bite of steel. Instead of becoming more dragonlike, the features of his face were chiselled to classical humanity: he had a straight nose, flat cheeks and his jaw had asserted itself in the last couple of months.

He met her gaze, pleased at her stare. She dropped her eyes. When had his face become so compelling?

‘We were trying to hunt,’ Tats responded irritably to Rapskal’s greeting. ‘But between you and your dragon, I suspect anything edible will have been scared out of the area.’

The smile faded slightly from Rapskal’s face. ‘I’m sorry,’ he responded sincerely. ‘I just wasn’t thinking. Heeby was so glad to find so much food and it feels so good when she’s happy and has a full belly. It made me want to be with my friends.’

‘Yes, well, Fente isn’t so fortunate. Nor Sintara. We’ve got to hunt to feed our dragons. And if Thymara had brought down that deer, instead of Heeby crashing on it, we would have had enough to give both of them a decent meal.’

Rapskal set his jaw and sounded defensive as he insisted, ‘Heeby didn’t know you were nearby until after she’d killed her meat. She wasn’t trying to take it from you.’

‘I know,’ Tats replied grumpily. ‘But all the same, between the two of you we’ve wasted half the day.’

‘I’m sorry.’ Rapskal’s voice had gone stiff. ‘I said that already.’

‘It’s all right,’ Thymara said hastily. It was unlike Rapskal to become prickly. ‘I know that you and Heeby didn’t mean to spoil our hunt.’ She gave Tats a rebuking look. Fente was just as wilful as Sintara. He should know that there would not have been anything Rapskal could have done to stop Heeby from taking the deer, even if he’d known they were stalking the same prey. The lost meat was not the main source of Tats’s irritation.

‘Well, there’s a way that you can make it up,’ Tats declared. ‘When Heeby’s finished, maybe she can make a second kill. One for our dragons.’

Rapskal stared at him. ‘When Heeby has eaten, she’ll need to sleep. And then finish off whatever is left of the meat. And, well, dragons don’t hunt or make kills for other dragons. It’s just not … just not something she’d ever do.’ At the stern look on Tats’s face, he added, ‘You know, the real problem is that your dragons don’t fly. If they would fly, they could make their own kills and I’m sure they’d love it as much as Heeby does. You need to teach them to fly.’

Tats stared at him. Sparks of anger lit his eyes. ‘Thanks for telling me the obvious, Rapskal. My dragon can’t fly.’ He rolled his eyes in exasperation. ‘That’s a real insight into the problem. So useful to know. Now, I need to go hunting.’ He turned abruptly and stalked off.

Thymara watched him go, open-mouthed. ‘Tats!’ she called. ‘Wait! You know we aren’t supposed to hunt alone!’ Then she turned back to Rapskal. ‘I’m sorry. I don’t know what made him so angry.’

‘Yes, you do,’ he cheerily called her on her lie. He caught up her hand and held it as he spoke on. ‘And so do I. But it doesn’t matter. You were the one I wanted to talk to anyway. Thymara, when Heeby wakes up from her gorge, do you want to go to Kelsingra? There’s something there I want to show you. Something amazing.’

‘What?’

He shook his head, his face full of mischief. ‘It’s us. That’s all I’m going to tell you. It’s us. You and me. And I can’t explain it; I just have to take you there. Please?’ He was bouncing on his toes as he spoke, incredibly pleased with himself. His grin was wide and she had to return his smile even as she reluctantly shook her head.

Kelsingra. Temptation burned hot. He would have to ask Heeby to fly her over. Riding on a dragon! Up in the air over the river. It was a terrifying yet fascinating thought.

But Kelsingra? She was not as certain about that part.

She’d been to the Elderling city exactly once and only for a few hours. The problem had been the river crossing. The river was rain-full now, swift and deep. It wandered in its wide riverbed during the summer, but now it filled it from bank to bank. A wide curve in the river meant that the current swept most swiftly and deeply right past the broken docks of ancient Kelsingra. Since they’d arrived, the Tarman had made two forays for the far shore. Each time, the current had swept the barge swiftly past the city and downriver. Each time, the liveship and his crew had battled their way back to the other side of the river and then back to the village. It had been horribly frustrating for all of them, to have come so far seeking the legendary city, and then not be able to dock there. Captain Leftrin had promised that when he returned from Cassarick he’d bring sturdy line and spikes and all else needed to create a temporary dock at Kelsingra.

But the young keepers had been unable to wait that long. Thymara and a handful of the other keepers had made the crossing once in two of the ship’s boats. It had demanded a full morning of strenuous rowing to cross the river. Even so, they had been pushed far downstream of the city’s broken stone docks and had to make their tedious way back. They’d arrived in late afternoon with only a few hours of rainy daylight left in which to explore the massive city of wide streets and tall buildings.

Thymara had always lived in a forest. That had been a strange thing to realize. She’d always thought of Trehaug as a city, a grand city at that, the largest in the Rain Wilds. But it wasn’t.

Kelsingra was a real city. The hike from the outskirts to the old city dock, portaging their boats, had proved that to her. They had left their small boats stacked there and ventured into the city. The streets were paved with stone and incredibly wide and empty of life. The buildings were made of immense blocks of black stone, much of it veined with silver. The blocks were huge and she could not imagine how they had been cut, let alone transported and lifted into place. The buildings had towered tall, not as tall as the trees of the Rain Wilds but taller than any human-created thing had a right to be. The structures were straight-sided, uncompromisingly man-made. Windows gaped above them, dark and empty. And it had been silent. The wind had whispered as it crept through the city as if fearful of waking it to life. The keepers who had made the crossing had kept to their huddle as they trudged through the streets and their voices had been muted and swallowed by that silence. Even Tats had been subdued. Davvie and Lecter had gripped hands as they walked. Harrikin had peered about as if trying to wake from a peculiar dream.

Sylve had slipped close to Thymara. ‘Do you hear that?’

‘What?’

‘Whispering. People talking.’

Thymara had listened. ‘It’s just the wind,’ she had said, and Tats had nodded. But Harrikin had stepped back and taken Sylve’s hand. ‘It’s not just the wind,’ he had asserted, and then they hadn’t spoken of it again.

They’d explored the portion of the city closest to the old docks and ventured into a few of the buildings. The structures were on a scale more suited to dragons than humans. Thymara, who had grown up in the tiny chambers of a tree-house home, had felt like an insect. The ceilings had been dim and distant in the fading afternoon light, the windows set high in the walls. Inside, there lingered the remnants of furnishings. In some, that had been no more than heaps of long-rotted wood on the floor, or a tapestry that crumbled into dangling, dusty threads at a touch. Light shone in colours through the streaked stained-glass windows, casting faded images of dragons and Elderlings on the stone floors.

In a few places, the magic of the Elderlings lingered. In one building, an interior room sprang to light when a keeper ventured into the chamber. Music, faint and uncertain, began to play, and a dusty perfume ventured out into the still air. A sound like distant laughter had twittered and then abruptly faded with the music. The group of keepers had fled back to the open air.

Tats had taken Thymara’s hand and she had been glad of that warm clasp. He had asked her quietly, ‘Do you think there’s even a chance that some Elderlings survived here? That we might meet them, or that they might be hiding and watching us?’

She’d given him a shaky smile. ‘You’re teasing me, aren’t you? To try to frighten me.’

His dark eyes had been solemn, even apprehensive. ‘No. I’m not.’ Looking around them, he had added, ‘I’m already uneasy and I’ve been trying not to think about it. I’m asking you because I’m genuinely wondering.’

She replied quickly to his unlucky words, ‘I don’t think they’re here still. At least, not in the flesh.’

His laugh had been brief. ‘And that is supposed to reassure me?’

‘No. It’s not.’ She felt decidedly nervous. ‘Where’s Rapskal?’ she had asked suddenly.

Tats had halted and looked around. The others had ranged ahead of them.

Thymara had raised her voice. ‘Where’s Rapskal?’

‘I think he went ahead,’ Alum called back to them.

Tats kept hold of her hand. ‘He’ll be fine. Come on. Let’s look around a bit more.’

They had wandered on. The emptiness of the broad plazas had been uncanny. It had seemed to her that after years of abandonment, life should have ventured back into this place. Grasses should have grown in the cracks in the paving stones. There should have been frogs in the green-slimed fountains, bird nests on building ledges and vines twining through windows. But there weren’t. Oh, there had been tiny footholds of vegetation here and there, yellow lichen caught between the fingers of a statue, moss in the cracked base of a fountain but not what there should have been. The city was too aggressively a city still, still a place for Elderlings, dragons and humans, even after all these years. The wilderness, the trees and vines and tangled vegetation that had formed the backdrop of Thymara’s life had been able to gain no foothold there. That made her feel an outsider as well.

Statues in dry fountains had stared down at them, and Thymara had felt no sense of welcome. More than once as she stared up at the carved images of Elderling women, she had wondered how her own appearance might change. They were tall and graceful creatures, with eyes of silver and copper and purple, their faces smoothly scaled. Some of their heads were crested with fleshy crowns. Elegant enamel gowns draped them, and their long slender fingers were adorned with jewelled rings. Would it be so terrible, she wondered, to become one of them? She considered Tats: his changes were not unattractive.

In one building, rows of tiered stone benches looked down at a dais. Bas reliefs of dragons and Elderlings, their mosaic colours still bright after all the years, cavorted on the walls. In that room, she had finally heard what the others were whispering about. Low, conversational voices, rising and falling. The cadence of the language was unfamiliar, and yet the meaning of the words had pushed at the edges of her mind.

‘Tats,’ she had said, more to hear her own voice than to call his name.

He had nodded abruptly. ‘Let’s go back outside.’

She had been glad to keep pace with his brisk stride as they hurried out into the fading daylight.

Some of the others had soon joined them and made a silent but mutual decision to return to the river’s edge and spend the night in a small stone hut there. It was made of ordinary river stone, and the hard-packed silt in the corners spoke of ancient floods that had inundated it. Doors and windows had long ago crumbled into dust. They had built a smouldering fire of wet driftwood in the ancient hearth, and huddled close to its warmth. It was only when the rest of their party joined them that Rapskal’s absence had become obvious.

‘We need to go back and look for him,’ she had insisted, and they had been splitting into search parties of three when he came in from the rising storm. Rain had plastered his hair to his skull and his clothing was soaked. He was shaking with cold but grinning insanely.

‘I love this city!’ he had exclaimed. ‘There’s so much to see and do here. This is where we belong. It’s where we’ve always belonged!’ He had wanted them all to go with him, back into the night to explore more. He had been baffled by their refusal, but had finally settled down next to Thymara.

The voices of wind, rain and the river’s constant roar had filled the night. From the distant hills had come wailing howls. ‘Wolves!’ Nortel had whispered and they had all shivered. Wolves were creatures of legend for them. Those sounds had almost drowned out the muttering voices. Almost. She had not slept well.

They had left Kelsingra in the next dawn. The rain had been pouring down, wind sweeping hard down the river. They had known they would battle most of the day to regain the other side. In the distance, Thymara could hear the roaring of hungry dragons. Sintara’s displeasure thundered in Thymara’s mind, and by the uneasy expression on the faces of the other keepers, she knew they were suffering similarly. They could stay in Kelsingra no longer that day. As they pulled away from the shore, Rapskal had gazed back regretfully. ‘I’ll be back,’ he said, as if he were promising the city itself. ‘I’ll be back every chance I get!’

Thanks to Heeby’s powers of flight, he had kept that promise. But Thymara hadn’t been back since that first visit. Curiosity and wariness battled in her whenever she thought of returning to the city.

‘Please. I have to show you something there!’

Rapskal’s words dragged her back to the present. ‘I can’t. I have to get meat for Sintara.’

‘Please!’ Rapskal cocked his head. His loose dark hair fell half across his eyes and he stared at her appealingly.

‘Rapskal, I can’t. She’s hungry.’ Why were the words so hard to say?

‘Well … she should be flying and hunting. Maybe she’d try harder if you let her be hungry for a day or—’

‘Rapskal! Would you let Heeby just be hungry?’

He kicked, half angrily, half shamed, at the thick layer of forest detritus. ‘No,’ he admitted. ‘No, I couldn’t. Not my Heeby. But she’s sweet. Not like Sintara.’

That stung. ‘Sintara’s not so bad!’ She was, really. But that was between her and her dragon. ‘I can’t go with you, Rapskal. I have to go hunting now.’

Rapskal flung up his hands, surrendering. ‘Oh, very well.’ He favoured her with a smile. ‘Tomorrow then. Maybe it will be less rainy. We could go early, and spend the whole day in the city.’

‘Rapskal, I can’t!’ She longed to soar through the morning sky on a dragon’s back. Longed to feel what it was to fly, study just how the dragon did it. ‘I can’t be gone a whole day. I need to hunt for Sintara, every day. Until she’s fed, I can’t do anything else. Can’t patch the roof of our hut, can’t mend my trousers, can’t do anything. She nags me in her thoughts; I feel her hunger. Don’t you remember what that was like?’

She studied his face as he knit his finely-scaled brows. ‘I do,’ he admitted at last. ‘Yes. Well.’ He sighed abruptly. ‘I’ll help you hunt today,’ he offered.

‘And I would thank you for that, and it would help today.’ She well knew that Tats had stalked off without her. There’d be no catching up with him. ‘But it won’t do a thing about Sintara being hungry tomorrow.’

He bit his upper lip and wriggled thoughtfully as if he were a child. ‘I see. Very well. I’ll help you hunt today to feed your lazy dragon. And tomorrow, I’ll think of something so that she can be fed without you spending the whole day on it. Then would you come with me to Kelsingra?’

‘I would. With my most hearty thanks!’

‘Oh, you will be more than thankful at what I wish to show you! And now, let’s hunt!’

‘Get up!’

Selden came awake shaking and disoriented. Usually they let him sleep at this time of day, didn’t they? What time of day was it? The light from a lantern blinded him. He sat up slowly, his arm across his eyes to shelter them. ‘What do you want of me?’ he asked. He knew they wouldn’t answer him. He spoke the words to remind himself that he was a man, not a dumb animal.

But this man did speak to him. ‘Stand up. Turn around and let me take a look at you.’

Selden’s eyes had adjusted a bit. The tent was not completely dark. Daylight leaked in through the patches and seams, but the brightness of the lantern still made his eyes stream tears. Now he knew the man. Not one of those who tended him, who gave him stale bread and scummy water and half-rotted vegetables, nor the one who liked to poke him with a long stick for the amusement of the spectators. No. This was the man who believed he owned Selden. He was a small man with a large, bulbous nose, and he always carried his purse with him, a large bag that he carried over one shoulder as if he could never bear to be parted from his coin for long.

Selden stood up slowly. He had not become any more naked than he had been, but the man’s appraising scrutiny made it feel as if he had. His visitors from earlier in the day were there also. Big Nose turned to a man dressed in the Chalcedean style. ‘There he is. That’s what you’d be buying. Seen enough?’

‘He looks thin.’ The man spoke hesitantly, as if he were trying to bargain but feared to anger the seller. ‘Sickly.’

Big Nose gave a harsh bark of laughter. ‘Well, this is the one I’ve got. If you can find a dragon-man in better condition, you’d best go buy him instead.’

There was a moment of silence. The Chalcedean merchant tried again. ‘The man I represent will want proof that he is what you say he is. Give me something to send him, and I’ll advise him to meet your price.’

Big Nose mulled this over for a short time. ‘Like what?’ he asked sullenly.

‘A finger. Or a toe.’ At the outrage on Big Nose’s face, the merchant amended, ‘Or just a joint off one of his fingers. A token. Of good faith in the bargaining. Your price is high.’

‘Yes. It is. And I’m not cutting anything off him that won’t grow back! I cut him, he takes an infection and dies, I’ve lost my investment. And how do I know that one finger isn’t all you really need? No. You want a piece of him, you pay me for it, up front.’

Selden listened and as the full implication of their words sunk into him, he reeled in sick horror. ‘You’re going to sell one of my fingers? This is madness! Look at me! Look me in the face! I’m a human!’

Big Nose turned and glared at him. Their eyes met. ‘You don’t shut up, you’re going to be a bloody human. And you heard me tell him, I’m not cutting anything off you that won’t grow back. So you got nothing to complain about.’

Selden thought he had already experienced the depths of cruelty that these men were capable of. Two cities ago, one of his tenders had rented him for the evening to a curious customer. His mind veered from recalling that and as Big Nose’s grinning assistant held up a black-handled knife, Selden heard a roaring in his ears.

‘It has to be something that proves he is what you say he is,’ the buyer insisted. He crossed his arms on his chest. ‘I’ll pay you ten silvers for it. But then if my master is satisfied and wants to buy him, you have to take ten silvers off your price.’

Big Nose considered it. His assistant cleaned his nails with the tip of the knife.

‘Twenty silvers,’ he countered. ‘Before we cut him.’

The Chalcedean chewed his lower lip. ‘For a piece of flesh, with scales on it, as big as the palm of my hand.’

‘Stop!’ Selden bellowed, but it came out as a shriek. ‘You can’t do this. You can’t!’

‘As big as my two fingers,’ Big Nose stipulated. ‘And the money here in my hand before we begin.’

‘Done,’ said the buyer quickly.

Big Nose spat into the straw and held out his hand. The coins chinked, one after another, into his palm.

Selden backed away as far as his chains would allow him. ‘I’ll fight you!’ he cried. ‘I’m not going to stand here and let you cut me.’

‘As you wish,’ Big Nose replied. He opened his purse and dropped the money in. ‘Give me the knife, Reever. You two get to sit on him while I take a piece off his shoulder.’

Day the 14th of the Hope Moon

Year the 7th of the Independent Alliance of Traders

From Kim, Keeper of the Birds, Cassarick to Trader Finbok, Bingtown

Sent in a doubly sealed messenger tube, with plugs of green and then blue wax. If either seal is missing or damaged, notify me immediately!

Greetings to Trader Finbok.

As you requested, I have continued to inspect shipments from my station. You know the hazards this presents for me, and I think you ought to be more generous in rewarding my efforts. My gleanings have been a bit confusing, but we both know that where there is secrecy, there is profit to be made. While there is no direct word of your son’s wife or on the success or failure of the Tarman expedition, I think that tidings I have sent you may be valuable in ways we cannot yet evaluate. And I remind you that our agreement was that you would pay me for the risks I took as much as the information I gleaned. To put it plainly and at great risk to myself if this message should fall into other hands, if my spying is discovered, I will lose my position as Bird Keeper. If that befalls me, all will want to know for whom I was spying. I think that my promise to keep that information private no matter what befalls me should be worth something to you. Think carefully before you rebuke me again for how paltry my tidings are. A man cannot catch fish when the river is empty.

For this reason, you must speak to a certain bird seller in the city, a man called Sheerup on the street of the meat vendors. He can arrange for me to receive a shipment of birds that will return to him rather than to the Guild cages, ensuring the privacy of our communication. He will then pass on my messages to you. This will not be cheap, but opportunities always go to the man who makes them his.

Convey my greetings to your wife, Sealia. I am sure her continued comfort and well-being as the wife of a wealthy Trader are important to both of you.

Kim

CHAPTER FOUR
Kelsingra

She walked the deserted streets alone. A gleaming Elderling robe of coppery fabric sheathed her body. In strange contrast, her boots were worn, and her flapping cloak was mottled with long use. Her bare head was bent to the wind that tugged her hair free of its pinned braids. Alise squinted her eyes against the tearing chill of the moving air and trudged doggedly on. Her hands were nearly numb but she clutched a floppy roll of bleached fabric in her hands. The doorway of a nearby house gaped open and empty, its wooden shutter long rotted away.

When she stepped inside, she gave a shuddering sigh of gratitude. It was no warmer, but at least the wind no longer tore away her body’s heat. The Elderling robe that Leftrin had given her kept her body warm, but it could not protect her head and neck, nor her hands and feet. The susurrus that filled the moving air and tugged at her attention died away. She hugged herself, warming her hands under her arms as she gazed around the abandoned dwelling. There was little to be seen. Outlines on the tiled floor told of wooden furniture long rotted away to crumbly splinters. She scuffed a boot across the floor. The tiles beneath the dust were a rich dark red.

A rectangular hole in the ceiling and a heap of ancient debris beneath it spoke of a stairway decayed to dust. The ceiling itself was sound. Long ‘beams’ of cut stone supported a structure of interlocked blocks. Before she came to Kelsingra she’d never seen the like, but fitted stonework seemed to predominate here, even in the smallest homes.

A hearth in the corner of the room had survived. It jutted out into the room, and was adorned with tiles. Alise gathered the tail of her cloak and rubbed it across the smoothly tiled mantel and then exclaimed in delight. What she had thought was smeared dirt on the red tiles were actually black etchings. As she studied them, she recognized that they had a theme. Cooking and foods. Here was a fat fish on a platter, and next to it a bowl full of round roots with the leaves still attached. On another tile, she found a steaming pot of something, and a third showed a pig roasting on a spit. ‘So. Elderlings appear to have enjoyed the same foods we do.’

She spoke softly almost as if she feared to wake someone. It was a feeling that had possessed her ever since Rapskal’s dragon had first brought her to visit the ruined city. It seemed empty, abandoned and dead. And yet she could not shake the feeling that around any corner, she might encounter the inhabitants in the midst of their lives. In the grander buildings built of black stones veined with silver she had been sure she had heard whisperings and once, singing. But calling and searching had revealed no one; only deserted rooms and the remains of furniture and other possessions turning to dust. Her shouts did not send squirrels scurrying or set invasion of pigeons to flight. Nothing prospered here, not a mouse, not an ant, and the scattered plant life she encountered looked unhealthy. Sometimes she felt as if she were the first visitor here in years.

A silly thought. Doubtless the winter winds had swept away all signs of previous passage, for wildlife was abundant, not only here but on the other side of the river. The rolling hills that surrounded the city were thickly forested and Heeby’s easy success in hunting attested to the thriving animal population. Only yesterday, Heeby had found and routed a whole herd of some heavy-bodied hoofed creatures that she had no name for. The red dragon had terrorized them from above, stampeding them down the hill, willy-nilly through the forest and to the riverside, where all the dragons had fallen on them and feasted to temporary satiation. So, the land on both sides of the river teemed with wildlife. But none of it ventured into the city.

It was but one of the mysteries of Kelsingra. So much of it stood, perfectly intact, as if every inhabitant had simply vanished. The few instances of damage seemed random, with one exception. A huge cleft, as if someone had taken a titanic axe and chopped a wedge into the city, interrupted the streets. The river had flowed in to fill it. She’d stood on the edge of that deep blue gash and stared down into what appeared to be endless depths. Was this what had killed the city? Or had it happened years later? And why did buildings stand independently of one another in this Elderling settlement, while the buried structures of Trehaug and Cassarick had all been constructed as one continuous warren of city? There were no answers for her questions.

She finished cleaning the hearth. One row of tiles was loose, sliding free in her hand. She caught one and gently set it on the floor. How many years had this homely hearth remained whole, to be undone by just her dusting? Well, she had seen it intact, and the image of what it had been would be recorded. It would not be completely lost as so much of Trehaug had been and Cassarick would be. There would at least be a record of this Elderling city.

Alise knelt before the hearth and unrolled her fabric. Once it had been part of a white shirt. Washing it in river water had yellowed the fabric and the seams of the garment had given way to the river’s acidity. So, the remaining rag was serving as parchment. It wasn’t very satisfactory. The ink she possessed had already been diluted more than once and when she tried to write on the fabric, the lines spread and blurred. But it was better than nothing, and when she had proper paper and ink again, she could transcribe all her notes. For now, she would not risk losing her first impressions of the place. She would record all she saw, to confirm it properly later. Her survey of the untouched Elderling city would survive anything that might happen to her.

Or to the city itself.

Anxiety made her grit her teeth. Leftrin planned to leave tomorrow morning to make the long run back to Cassarick and possibly Trehaug. In the treetop Rain Wild city, he’d collect the pay owed to all of them from the Rain Wild Council, and then he would buy supplies. Warm clothes and flour and sugar. Oil and coffee and tea. But in the course of it, he’d have to reveal that they’d rediscovered Kelsingra. She’d already discussed with him what that might mean. The Traders would be eager to explore yet another Elderling domain. They’d come, not to learn but to plunder, to find and take whatever remained of the magical Elderling artefacts and art. Looters and treasure hunters would arrive in droves. Nothing was sacred to them. All they thought of was profit. The hearth in this humble dwelling would be robbed of its tiles. The immense bas-reliefs on Kelsingra’s central tower would be cut free, crated and shipped off. The treasure hunters would take the statuary from the fountains, the scraps of documents from what appeared to be a records hall, the decorative stone lintels, the mysterious tools, the stained glass windows … and all of it would be jumbled together and carried off as mere merchandise.

She thought of a place that she and Leftrin had discovered. Boards of ivory and ebony, dusty playing pieces still in place, had rested undisturbed on low marble tables. She had not recognized any of the games, nor the runes on the jade and amber chips that were scattered in the wide bowl of a scooped-out granite stand. ‘They gambled here,’ she suggested to Leftrin.

‘Or prayed, perhaps. I’ve heard of priests in the Spice Isles that use rune stones to see if a man’s prayers will be answered.’

‘That could be it, too,’ she’d replied. So many riddles. The walkways between the tables were wide, and on the floor of the room, large rectangles in a different stone gleamed black. ‘Are those warming places for dragons? Did they come in here to watch the gambling, or the praying?’

Leftrin’s reply had been a helpless shrug. She feared she would never know the answer to that question. The clues that could tell what Kelsingra had been would be torn away and sold, except for what she could document before the scavengers arrived.

The plundering of Kelsingra was inevitable. Ever since she’d realized that, Alise had begged passage to the city every day on which it was clear enough for Heeby to fly. She had spent every daylight hour visiting and recording her impression of every structure, rather than rushing from building to building. Better to have a detailed and accurate recording of part of the ancient city than a haphazard sampling of all of it, she’d decided.

Now, she heard footsteps on the pavement outside and went to the door. Leftrin was striding through the empty streets, his hands stuffed under his crossed arms for warmth and his chin tucked into his chest. His grey eyes were narrowed against the sharp breeze. The cold had reddened his cheeks above his dark beard and the wind had mussed his always-unruly hair. Even so, her heart warmed at the sight of him. The blocky ship’s captain in his worn jacket and trousers would not have merited a second glance from her during her days as a respectable Bingtown Trader’s daughter. But in the months of their companionship on board the Tarman, she’d discovered his true worth. She loved him. Loved him far more than she’d ever loved her cruel husband Hest, even in the first heady days of her infatuation with the handsome fellow. Leftrin was rough-spoken and scarcely educated in any of the finer things of life. But he was honest and capable and strong. And he loved her, openly and whole-heartedly.

‘I’m here!’ she called to him, and he turned his steps her way and hurried to join her.

‘It’s getting colder out there,’ he greeted her as he stepped into the small shelter of the house. ‘The wind is kicking up and promising rain. Or maybe sleet.’

She stepped into his embrace. His outer clothes were chill against her but as they held one another, they warmed. She stepped back slightly to capture his rough hands and hold them between her own, chafing them. ‘You need gloves,’ she told him, uselessly.

‘We all need gloves. And every other kind of warm clothing. And replacements for all the gear, tools and food supplies we lost in that flood-wave. I fear Cassarick is our only source.’

‘Carson said he could—’

Leftrin shook his head. ‘Carson’s bringing down lots of meat, and the keepers are getting better at hunting in this new kind of terrain. We’re all staying fed, but it’s only meat and the dragons are never full. And Carson’s tanning the skin off every creature, but it takes time, and we don’t have the proper tools. He can make stiff hides that work as floor coverings or to cover windows. But to make serviceable bed furs or leather to wear requires time and equipment we don’t have. I have to go to Cassarick, my dear. I can’t put it off any longer. And I want you to go with me.’

She leaned her forehead on his shoulder and shook her head. ‘I can’t.’ Her words were muffled in his embrace. ‘I have to stay here. There is so much to document, and I have to get it done before it’s spoiled.’ She lifted her face and spoke before he could launch into the familiar reassurances. Useless to talk about it. ‘How did your work go?’ she asked, changing the subject.

‘Slowly.’ He shook his head. He had taken on the task of designing a new landing for the city. ‘Really, all I can do is plan and make a list of what I need to buy. The river sweeps past the front of the city; the drop-off is immediate, the water is deep and the current swift. There’s no place to put Tarman aground, and nothing I trust to tie up to. Even with every sweep manned, we were carried right past the city and downriver. I don’t know if it has always been that way, but I think not. I suspect the depth of the water varies quite a bit and that when summer comes the water will recede a bit. If so, summer will be our time to build.

‘I’ve tested the old pilings that are left. The wooden ones are only shells, but the stone ones seem sturdy. We can go upriver on the other side, cut timber there, and then raft it downriver to the city. Landing the logs here will be the challenge. But it would be a waste of time to attempt it right now. We don’t have tools and fasteners to build the sort of dock we’d need before a large ship could safely tie up here. And the only place to get those is—’

‘Trehaug,’ she finished for him.

‘Trehaug. Possibly Cassarick. A long journey either way. I stocked the ship for an expedition, not to found a settlement. And the keepers lost so much of their basic equipment and extra clothes and blankets in that flash flood that, well, there just isn’t enough to go round. It’s going to be a hard winter here until I return with fresh supplies.’

‘I don’t want to be separated from you, Leftrin. But I’m going to stay here and keep working. I want to learn as much about the city as I can before the Traders descend on it and tear it apart.’

Leftrin sighed and pulled her in close. ‘My dear, I have told you a hundred times. We’ll protect this place. No one else knows the way here and I don’t plan to pass my charts around. If they try to follow us back here, well, they’ll discover that Tarman can move by night as well as by day. Even if they manage to follow us this far, they’ll have the same problem docking a ship here that we do. I’ll hold them off as long as I can, Alise.’

‘I know.’

‘So. Can we talk about the real reason you don’t want to go back to Trehaug?’

She shook her head, her face against his shoulder, but then admitted, ‘I don’t want to go anywhere that I have to remember that I was Alise Finbok. I don’t want to touch any part of that old life. I just want my life to be here and now, with you.’

‘And it is, my lady, my darling. I’m not going to let anyone steal you from me.’

She pulled back and looked up into his eyes. ‘I had an idea today, while I was working. What if you reported my death when you went back? You could send a bird to Hest and one to my parents, saying I’d fallen overboard and drowned. As clumsy and foolish as they think me, they’d surely believe it.’

‘Alise!’ He was horrified. ‘I never want to speak such words aloud, not even as a lie! And your poor family! You couldn’t do that to them!’

‘I think they’d be relieved,’ she muttered, but knew that they still would weep for her.

‘And there is your work to think of. You can’t be dead and do your work!’

‘What?’

He let go of her and stepped back. ‘Your work. Your studies of the dragons and the Elderlings. You’ve worked too long on all of that just to let it go. You need to finish it, if it’s a thing that can be finished. Keep your logs, make your drawings. Meet with Malta and Reyn the Elderlings and tell them what you’ve found. Share your findings with the world. If you claim to be dead, you can’t very well take credit for what you’ve discovered. Let alone protect it.’

She had no name for the emotion that flooded her. It was hard to believe that anyone would say such words to her. ‘You … you understand what that means to me?’ She looked away, suddenly embarrassed. ‘My writings and my silly little sketches, my attempts at translations, my—’

‘Enough!’ There was shocked rebuke in his voice. ‘Alise, there is nothing “silly” about what you are doing, any more than my charting the Rain Wild River is “silly”. Don’t you belittle our work! And don’t ever speak poorly of yourself, especially to me! I fell in love with that earnest woman with her sketchbooks and journals. I felt flattered that such an educated lady would even spend time explaining it all to me. What you are doing is important! For Rain Wilders, for dragons, for history! We are here, seeing something happen with these dragons and their keepers. Those youngsters are changing into Elderlings. First dragons and now Elderlings are coming back into our world. For now, it’s just here. But can you look at the dragons and the keepers and doubt what must follow? Heeby gets stronger every day. Most of the other dragons have managed short flights, even if some ended by crashing into the river or the trees. By winter’s end, I think most of them will be able to hunt and fly at least a little. And none of the keepers have spoken about returning to Trehaug or Cassarick. They’re staying here and some of them are pairing up. Sa help us all! This is the start of something, Alise, and you’re already a part of it. Too late to back out now. Too late to hide.’

‘I don’t really want to hide.’ She walked slowly to the hearth and knelt down. Reluctantly, she picked up one of the decorated tiles from the floor. ‘I made a promise to Malta. I intend to keep that.’ She studied the tile. Delicate brushstrokes had delineated a bubbling kettle of soup. A wreath of herbs framed it. ‘I’ll send this with you for her, when you go. With a message from me, to let her know that we really have found Kelsingra. That there is still a place for dragons and Elderlings in this world.’

‘You could go with me. Tell her yourself.’

Alise shook her head, almost vehemently. ‘No, Leftrin. I’m not ready to face that world yet. I’ll give you messages to send to my family, to let them know I’m alive and fine. But no more than that. Not yet.’

When she glanced over her shoulder at him, he was looking at the floor. His mouth was flat with disappointment. She rose and went to him.

‘Don’t think that I’m not going to confront what I must do. I’m going to cut myself free of Hest. I want to stand freely by your side, not as his runaway wife, but as a woman free to choose her own life. Hest broke our marriage contract. I know I’m no longer bound to him.’

‘Then send word of that to the Bingtown Council. Renounce him. He broke his promises to you. The contract is void.’

She sighed. This was another conversation they’d had before. ‘You just chided me for wanting to pretend I was dead, saying it would hurt my family. Well, I don’t see a way to force Hest to release me without hurting an even wider circle of people. I can say he was unfaithful but I don’t have witnesses who will stand up and confirm that. I can’t ask Sedric to come forward, not with the shame it would bring on his family! He is building something new here, just as I am. I don’t want to drag him away from Carson and back to Bingtown, to make him a source of scandal and cruel jokes. Hest would simply call him a liar, and I know that he could find plenty of his friends who would swear he spoke truth, no matter what he said.’

She took a breath and added, ‘It would ruin my family socially. Not that we have much stature in Bingtown. And, and I would have to stand before the Bingtown Council and admit that I had been a fool, not just in marrying Hest, but in staying with him all those wasted years …’

Her voice trailed away. Sick shame rose up and engulfed her. Every time she thought she had set it all behind her, the issue of how Hest still bound her would bring this back. For years she had wondered why he treated her so poorly. She had humiliated herself trying to gain his attention. All she had won was his contempt for her efforts. It was only when she had left Bingtown to pursue a brief interlude of study of her beloved dragons in the Rain Wilds that she had discovered the truth about her husband. He had never cared for her at all. The marriage had been a ruse to mask his true preferences. Sedric, her childhood friend and her husband’s assistant had been far more than a secretary and valet to him.

And all Hest’s friends had known.

Her guts tightened and her throat closed up. How could she have been so blind, so stupid? So ignorant, so blissfully naïve? How could she have gone for years without questioning his odd behaviour in the marital bed, lived with his sharp little jibes and social neglect? She had no answers for those questions except that she had been stupid. Stupid, stupid, stu—

‘Stop that!’ Leftrin took her arm and gently shook it. He shook his head at her as well. ‘I hate to see you go off like that. Your eyes narrow and you grit your teeth, and I know just what is running through that head of yours. Stop blaming yourself. Someone deceived you and hurt you. You don’t need to take on the burden of that. That man who committed the offence is at fault, not the person he wronged.’

She sighed but the weight inside her remained. ‘You know what they say, Leftrin. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Well, he fooled me a thousand times, and I don’t doubt that many in his audience enjoyed it. I don’t ever want to go back to Bingtown. Never. I never want to look at anyone I knew there and wonder who knew I was a fool and didn’t tell me.’

‘Enough,’ Leftrin said abruptly, but his voice was gentle. ‘The light is going out of the day. And I feel a more serious storm rising. It’s time we went back to our side of the river.’

Alise glanced outside. ‘I don’t want to be caught on this side after dark,’ she agreed. She looked at him directly and waited for him to add something, but he was silent. She said no more. There were times when she realized that as close as they were, he was still a Rain Wilder while she had grown up in Bingtown. There were some things he didn’t talk about. But this was something, she abruptly decided, that could not remain undiscussed. She cleared her throat, and said, ‘The voices seem to get louder as we get closer to night.’

Leftrin met her gaze. ‘They do.’ He went to the door and looked out as if scouting for danger. That simple measure sent a chill up her back. Had he expected to see something? Someone? He spoke quietly. ‘It’s the same in some parts of Trehaug and Cassarick. The buried ruins, I mean, not the treetop cities. But it’s not the dark that brings them out. I think it’s when you’re alone, or feel alone. One becomes more susceptible. It’s stronger in Kelsingra than I’ve ever before sensed it. But it’s not as bad in this part of town where simple folk lived. In the parts of the city where the buildings are grand and the streets so wide, I hear the whispers almost all the time. Not loud, but constant. The best thing to do is ignore them. Don’t let your mind focus on them.’

He looked back over his shoulder at her, and she had the feeling she had learned as much as she wanted to know, for now. There was more he could tell her; she sensed that, but she would save her questions for when they were warming themselves by a cosy fire in a well-lit room. Not here, in a cold city with the shadows gathering.

She gathered her things, including the loose tile from the hearth. She studied the picture again, and then handed it to Leftrin. He took a well-worn kerchief from his pocket and wrapped the precious thing. ‘I’ll take good care of it,’ he promised before she could ask. Arm in arm, they left the cottage.

Outside, the overcast day had darkened as the clouds thickened and the sun sank behind the gentle hills and the steeper cliffs that backed them. The shadows of the houses loomed over the winding streets. Alise and Leftrin hurried, the chill wind pushing them along. As they left behind the modest houses Alise had been investigating and entered the main part of the city, the whispers grew stronger. She didn’t hear them with her ears and she could not pick out any individual voice or stream of words: rather, it was a press of thoughts against her mind. She shook her head, refusing them, and hurried on.

She’d never been in a city like this one. Bingtown was a large and grand city, a city built for show, but Kelsingra had been built to a scale that dwarfed humans. The passageways in this part of Kelsingra were wide, wide enough for dragons to pass one another in the streets. The gleaming black buildings, too, were sized to admit dragons. The roofs were higher, and the doorways both wide and tall. Whenever they came to steps, the central sections were always wide and shallow, not sized for a human’s stride at all. Two steps to cross each step and then the hop down. At the edges, flights scaled for humans paralleled the course.

She passed a dry fountain. In the middle, a life-sized dragon reared on his hind legs, clasping a struggling stag in his jaws and forepaws. Around the next corner, she encountered a memorial to an Elderling statesman carrying a scroll in one long slender hand while he pointed aloft with his other. It had been crafted from the same black stone threaded with fine silver lines. It was plain that Elderlings and dragons had both dwelt here, side by side and possibly sharing abodes. She thought of the keepers, and how their dragons were changing them, and wondered if some day this city would shelter such a population again.

They turned onto a wide boulevard and the wind roared with renewed strength. Alise clutched her poor cloak closer about her and bent her head to the wind’s buffeting. This street led straight down to the river port and the remains of the docks that had once awaited ships there. A few remnant stone pilings jutted from the water. She lifted her gaze and through streaming eyes beheld the gleaming black surface of the river. On the horizon; the sun was foundering behind the wooded hills. ‘Where is Rapskal?’ She half-shouted the words to push them through the wind. ‘He said he’d bring Heeby to the water’s edge at sunset.’

‘He’ll be there. The lad may be a bit strange, but in some ways he’s the most responsible keeper when it comes to keeping his word. Over there. There they are.’

She followed Leftrin’s pointing hand and saw them. The dragon lingered at the edge of an elevated stone dais that overlooked the water. The dais adjoined a crumbled ramp. Alise knew from the bas reliefs that decorated it that once it would have led to a launching platform for dragons. She surmised that perhaps older and heavier dragons needed a height advantage to get their bulk off the ground. Before the blocks of the ramp had given way to decades of winter river floods, it had probably been very high. Now it terminated just beyond the statue’s dais.

Heeby’s keeper had clambered up onto the dais and stood at the base of a many-times-larger-than-life statue of an Elderling couple. The man gestured wide with an out flung arm, while the woman’s pointing finger and gracefully tilted head indicated that her gaze followed something, possibly a dragon in flight. Rapskal’s head was tipped back and he had stretched up one hand to touch the hip of one Elderling. He stood, staring up at the tall, handsome creature as if entranced.

Heeby, his dragon, shifted restlessly as she waited for him. She was probably hungry again already. All she did of late was hunt and feed and hunt again. The red dragon was twice the size she had been when Alise had first met her. She was no longer the stumpy, blocky creature she had been: her body and tail had lengthened, and her hide and half-folded wings gleamed crimson, catching the red rays of the setting sun and throwing them back. Muscle rippled in her sinuous neck as she turned to watch their approach. She lowered her head suddenly and hissed low, a warning. Alise halted in her tracks. ‘Is something wrong?’ she called.

The wind swept away her words and Rapskal made no reply. The dragon shifted again and half-reared on her hind legs. She sniffed at Rapskal and then nudged him. The boy’s body gave to her push but he made no indication that he was aware of her.

‘Oh, no,’ Leftrin groaned. ‘Please, Sa, no. Give the boy another chance.’ The captain released her arm and lurched into a run.

The dragon threw back her head and whistled loudly. For a tense moment, Alise expected the creature to charge or spit acid at Leftrin. Instead, she nuzzled Rapskal again, with as little response. Then she dropped onto all fours again and stood staring at them. Her eyes whirled. She was plainly distressed about something, which did nothing to reassure Alise. A distressed dragon was a dangerous dragon.

‘Rapskal! Stop day-dreaming and tend to Heeby! Rapskal!’ Her shout fought the wind.

The young keeper stood as still as the statue he touched, and the dwindling daylight glittered on the scarlet scaling on his bared hands and face. Heeby moved to block Leftrin but the sailor dodged adroitly around her. ‘I’m going to help him, dragon. Stay out of my way.’

‘Heeby, Heeby, it will be all right. Let him pass, let him pass!’ Heedless of her own danger, Alise did her best to distract the anxious dragon as Leftrin set his palms to the chest-high pedestal and then vaulted up onto it. He seized Rapskal around the chest and then spun away from the statue, tearing the boy’s grip from the stone. As he did so, the keeper cried out wordlessly and suddenly went limp in the man’s arms. Leftrin staggered with his sudden weight and both of them sank down to sit at the statue’s feet.

Heeby shifted restlessly, swinging her head back and forth in agitation. She was the only dragon that had never spoken to Alise. Despite being the only dragon that could both fly and hunt capably now, she had never seemed especially bright, although she had always seemed to share her keeper’s sunny temperament. Now as Leftrin held the youngster in his arms and spoke worriedly to him, the dragon seemed more like an anxious dog than a powerful predator.

Even so, Alise gave her a wide berth as she made her way to the dais. It took her considerably more effort to gain the top of it than it had Leftrin, but she managed. The captain knelt on the cold stone cradling Rapskal. ‘What’s wrong with him? What’s happened?’

‘He was drowning,’ Leftrin said in a low voice full of dread.

But as Rapskal’s face lolled toward her, she saw only his idiotically bemused grin and barely open eyes. She frowned. ‘Drowning? He looks more drunk than drowned! But where did he get spirits?’

‘He didn’t.’ Leftrin gave him another shake. ‘He’s not drunk.’ But his next actions seemed to belie his statement as he gave Rapskal another shake. ‘Come out of it, lad. Come back to your own life. There’s a dragon here that needs you, and night is coming on. Storm’s coming in, too. If we’re to get to the other side before it’s dark, we need you to wake up.’

He glanced at Alise and became Captain Leftrin dealing with an emergency.

‘Jump down and take his legs when I pass him down,’ he commanded, and she obeyed. When had the lad got so tall? she wondered, as Leftrin eased the limp Rapskal down into her arms. When she’d first met him, he’d seemed just past boyhood, made younger than his peers by his simplicity. Then he and his dragon had vanished and all had believed them both dead. Since their return, the dragon had proved her competence as a predator and Rapskal had seemed both older and more ethereal, sometimes a mystical Elderling and sometimes a wondering boy. Like all the keepers, his close contact with his dragon was changing him. His ragged trousers exposed the heavy red scaling on his feet and calves. It reminded Alise of the tough orange skin on a chicken’s legs. And like a bird, he weighed less than she had expected as Leftrin let go of Rapskal and she took his full weight to keep him upright. His eyes were wide open.

‘Rapskal?’ she said, but he folded laxly over her shoulder.

With a thump and a grunt, Leftrin landed beside her. ‘Give him to me,’ he said gruffly as Heeby pressed her nose against Rapskal’s back, sending Alise staggering back against the statue’s pedestal. ‘Dragon, stop that!’ he commanded Heeby, but as the dragon’s eyes spun swiftly, he added more gently, ‘I’m trying to help him, Heeby. Give me some space.’

It wasn’t clear she understood him, but she did step back as Leftrin stretched Rapskal out on the cold stone. ‘Wake up, lad. Come back to us.’ He tapped his face with light slaps, then took him by the shoulders, sat him up and shook him. Rapskal’s head snapped back on his neck, eyes wide, and then, as his head came forward again, life came back to his face. His affable smile, never long absent, blossomed as he looked up at them beatifically. ‘Dressed for the festival,’ he said cheerily. ‘In a gown made of eel skin dyed pink to match her brow scaling. More delicate than a tiny lizard on an air-blossom, she was, and her lips softer than a rose’s petals.’

‘Rapskal!’ Leftrin rebuked him severely. ‘Come back to us now. Here. We are cold and night is coming on and this city has been dead for Sa knows how long. There is no festival, and no woman wearing a gown such as you describe. Come back now!’ He seized the youth’s face between his hands and forced the boy to meet his glowering stare.

After a long moment, Rapskal abruptly pulled his knees up to his chest and began to shiver violently. ‘I’m so cold!’ he complained. ‘We need to get back to the other side and warm ourselves at a fire. Heeby! Heeby, where are you? It’s getting dark! You need to carry us across to the other side!’

At the sound of his voice, the dragon thrust her head into the midst of the huddled group, sending both Leftrin and Alise staggering back. She opened her mouth wide, tasting the air all around Rapskal as he exclaimed, ‘Of course I’m all right! I’m just cold. Why did we stay here so long? It’s nearly dark.’

‘It is dark,’ Leftrin retorted gruffly. ‘And we stayed here so long because you were careless. I can’t believe that you didn’t know better! But for now, we won’t talk about it. We just need to get back to our side of the river.’

The keeper was rapidly coming to his senses. Alise watched him sit up straight and then stagger to his feet, lurching toward his dragon. As soon as he could touch Heeby, they both seemed to calm. The dragon ceased her restless shifting. Rapskal drew a deeper breath and turned toward them. His face had relaxed into its handsome lines. He pushed his dark hair back and spoke almost accusingly. ‘Poor Heeby will be flying in the dark by the time she makes her third trip. We need to start now.’

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