Nightfall found all the keepers sleeping in a row on the deck of the Tarman. Thymara had chosen a spot by the ship’s railing. She pillowed her head on her arms and stared toward the riverbank. Except for their dying campfire on shore and the single light from the barge window, the darkness was absolute and hard to get used to. Every time they stopped for the night, it was the same. They had left Cassarick far behind them. There were no friendly lights from a tree-built city to pierce the blackness of night under the great trees, no sounds from neighbouring houses. Thymara skirted the edges of sleep but could not seem to enter. Too much had happened too fast in the last few days. She swatted at a mosquito buzzing near her ear and asked the darkness, ‘Why are we doing this? It’s crazy. We don’t know where we’re going or what to expect. There’s no end in sight. Why are we doing this?’
‘For money,’ Jerd whispered back. She sighed contentedly and rolled over in her blanket. ‘To be doing something new.’
‘’Cause we haven’t got anything better to do?’ Rapskal asked from the dimness on her left. ‘And because it’s the best time I ever had in my life.’ He sounded deeply satisfied with his day.
‘To get away from everything else and start something new,’ Greft asserted grandly. Thymara gritted her teeth.
‘I need to sleep!’ Tats complained. ‘Could you all keep it down?’ Tonight, he had thrown his blanket down on the deck next to Rapskal. He’d seemed in a foul temper about something.
Someone, possibly Harrikin, chuckled. Silence fell again. The river lapped at the barge. On the shore, one of the dragons grunted loudly in its sleep, and was still again. Thymara pulled her blanket up over her head to block out the mosquitoes and stared into a smaller darkness.
Nothing was as Thymara had expected it to be. There was no grand adventure to this journey. So quickly the days had settled into a routine. They woke early and the keepers breakfasted together, usually on ship’s bread and dried fish or porridge. They refilled their water bottles from the sand-wells they’d dug the night before. The hunters left camp before dawn each day, paddling upriver. They needed to go before the dragons’ noise and activity frightened all the game. The dragons went next, as soon as they roused; then the keepers set out in their small boats, followed by the barge.
The others traded off partners in their boats, but no one else ever offered to partner with Rapskal. Several of the other keepers had expressed interest in sharing a boat with her. Warken had asked her, and Harrikin. Sylve had suggested twice that they might travel together the next day. But each morning, there was Rapskal, sitting expectantly in the boat by the shore, waiting for her. She had thought of partnering with someone else, knowing that if she did someone would be forced to share a boat with him. But so far, she hadn’t. Part of it was that they moved a boat very well together. And part of it was that his good nature and optimism were cheering to her at a time when she felt very much alone. Conversations with him might be odd and wandering, but he was not the lackwit that some of the others seemed to think he was. He simply came at life from a different angle. That was all.
And he was, after all, rather pleasant to look at.
Her body was becoming more accustomed to a full day of paddling the boat, but she still ached each night. The blisters on her hands were turning into calluses. The sunlight glinting on the water no longer seemed as harsh as it first had to her canopy-trained eyes. Her hair felt more like straw each day, and she had the uneasy sensation that her scaling was progressing faster than it had when she lived in the trees. But that was to be expected. Rain Wilders always seemed to scale more as they aged. Those things she could accept, but the physical monotony of paddling, day after day, was beginning to tell on her spirits.
Today had provided no exception. The morning had passed slowly, with little change in the endless foliage along the river-bank. In early afternoon, the keepers had been dismayed to hear wild trumpeting from the dragons ahead. When they caught up to them, some sort of disaster seemed to have befallen them, for the dragons were splashing wildly and sometimes immersing themselves completely in the water.
After several near disastrous accidents among the keepers in their canoes, they had made the discovery that the dragons had simply intercepted a thick run of fish and had made the most of their chance to gorge. Shortly after that, the dragons had hauled themselves out onto a long, low, reedy bank and promptly gone to sleep. By the time the keepers caught up with them there had still been plenty of daylight left. They could have travelled farther upstream, but the sleeping dragons refused to be prodded along. Their keepers had had little choice save to pull their small boats up into the shallows and stop for the rest of the day.
Skymaw had plainly got her share of the fish. Her belly bulged with it, and her somnolence was that of a sated predator. She had not wanted to be bothered by cleaning and grooming. Not only had she refused to awaken, she had growled in her sleep, baring teeth that looked longer and sharper for the fresh blood on her muzzle.
Fente was the only dragon social enough to tell them about it. She was very excited and insisted on telling the tale over and over as Tats groomed her. She made the process more exciting for him as she became caught up in her bragging, and acted out how she had darted in her head, seized a huge fish and broke his spine with a single snap. ‘And I ate him, gulping him down whole. Now you see that I am a dragon to reckon with, not a penned cow to be fattened with bad meat. I can kill. I have killed a riverpig, and I have eaten a hundred fish of my own catching. Now you see that I am a dragon, and I do not need to be kept by any human!’
Thymara and several of the others had clustered around to hear her words and watch Tats attempt to groom the lively little green. The small dragon had smears of blood on her face and several long threads of sticky guts stuck to her jaw and throat. Tats energetically scrubbed at her scaled face, smiling indulgently at her brags and her insistence that dragons had no need of human intervention. He was obviously infatuated with her. Thymara knew of the reputation the dragons had for charisma; she did not doubt that the ever-pragmatic Tats was more than a little under the glamour of the creature.
She suspected that even she herself was under Skymaw’s spell. It had hurt her feelings more than a little that Skymaw had not even wakened enough to tell her of her triumphant kill. She felt excluded from her dragon’s life, and a bit jealous of Tats. At the same time, there was a tickling of unease at the back of her mind, as a perception she was reluctant to recognize became clearer for her. No matter how Tats might smile as he washed the blood and guts from Fente’s face, she was not a cute or even remotely masterable creature. She was a dragon, and even if her boasting sounded childish, she was swiftly discovering what it meant to be a dragon. Her declarations that she had no need for humans were not idle brags. The dragons tolerated the keepers and their attentions for now, but perhaps not for always.
Somehow, she had expected all dragons to be somewhat alike. In her early fancies about her new career, she had imagined them as noble and intelligent with generous natures. Well, perhaps Sylvie’s golden could live up to that concept, but the others were as diverse as their keepers. Tats’ green was a nasty bit of work when she wished to be. Nortel’s lavender dragon was shy, until one approached too close and then he might take a snap. Good-natured Lecter and the large blue male he had befriended seemed well matched, right down to the spikes both were growing on their necks. The cousins Kase and Boxter’s orange dragons seemed as like-minded as their keepers.
Ever since she had witnessed the hatching, Thymara had seen the dragons as creatures that needed humans to survive. That perception of them had blinded her to how lethal they could be. She had, of course, always known that any of them was large enough to kill a man easily. Some were quick and clever enough that if they desired to become man-eaters, they’d be deadly and cunning enemies. Their disdain for humanity and sense of superiority had, until today, seemed an annoying but merely dragonish trait. Now her gaze wandered from the lively and occasionally good-natured Fente past her own sleeping Skymaw to Kalo.
The largest and most aggressive of the dragons had made himself a rough nest in the coarse reeds. His large claws had raked up damp earth and the reeds that had grown there to make a sleeping place. He dozed there, his massive head cushioned on his front feet, his wings folded against his back in sleep. Like all the dragons, he lacked the ability to fly, but in every other way, he looked fully-formed. When she focused both her gaze and her thoughts on him, it seemed to her that he seethed with anger and frustration, as if his immense blue-black body concealed a simmering cauldron of rage. Greft, his keeper, sat on the ground not far from Kalo. The great dragon was clean, his scales gleaming. Thymara had wondered if his keeper had done that, or if Kalo had cleaned himself. Greft’s eyes were almost closed. He looked, she thought, like a man warming himself at a fire. For a moment, she had a sense of Greft enjoying the simmering heat of Kalo’s aggression and anger. Even as the image came to her, Greft opened his eyes. She caught a flash of gleaming blue in them and cast her gaze aside, trying to seem as if she had been staring past him. She felt uncomfortable that he should know she had been watching him.
Nonetheless, he smiled and made a small gesture, beckoning her to come closer. She pretended not to notice it. In response, his grin widened. He put out a hand to caress his sleeping dragon. His hand moved slowly, sensually over the dragon’s shoulder, as if he would point out to her how strong the creature was. The whole show unsettled her; she turned her head quickly as if she had been distracted by something Rapskal had said. Greft might have chuckled.
It was actually Sylve’s comment that caught her attention. ‘I am glad they had some luck hunting for themselves. At least they’ve had some food. Hadn’t we best try to do some hunting or fishing here now, for ourselves? Because I think they’ve settled for the night.’
She was right, of course. The boat carried some provisions, but fresh meat was always welcome. The hunters had been doing a good job so far of making daily kills. Every day there was some fresh meat for the dragons, even if it was not enough to fill them. The keepers had not been as successful. They spent most of their short hours of shore-time each evening in grooming the dragons or doing what fishing they could. Today they’d have part of an afternoon as well as an early evening. Thymara saw that realization settle over the others. Most of them chose to try for fish; Thymara guessed that the rushes and reeds of this section of bank would offer habitat to lots of fish, but she doubted that any would be large enough to be truly useful in feeding a dragon. And she was tired of the water and the muddy riverbanks. She needed time alone in her forest and up in the trees.
She equipped herself with her bow and a quiver of arrows, a knife and some rope and headed off into the gloom under the immense trees. She did not move randomly, nor did she stay long on the ground. She paralleled the river for a short way, looking for game trails. When she struck one, she studied it briefly. The paw-marks of some of the smaller denizens of the forest had been trodden over by the deeper imprints of cloven hooves. Most of the tracks were small; she knew they belonged to what the Rain Wilders called dancer deer. Small and light-footed, they were creatures that moved quickly and silently through the forest, taking advantage of low browse and whatever dry land they could find under the trees. Some had been seen to scramble up low branches and actually run along them. One of them would not make much of a dent in a dragon’s appetite, and they were so wary that even if she found a group of them drowsing, she would not be able to kill more than one before the others had fled.
But a few of the tracks were larger and deeper, the cloven hooves splayed wider. Marsh elk would be travelling alone this time of year. If she had the great good fortune to kill one, she’d be able to carry maybe a quarter of it back to camp. But perhaps Tats would help her fetch the rest back in return for a share. Today, he had shared a boat with Warken instead of Jerd. Perhaps that meant that tonight he’d have time to do something besides sit and listen to Jerd talk. Thymara shook her head to banish thoughts of him. He’d made his choice for companionship. There was no reason why it should bother her.
She set her hopes for an elk even as she was resigned to the fact that she’d be fortunate even to get a dancer. It was more likely that she’d encounter one of the pawed omnivores that lived along the riverbank. Their meat was edible, though not something she relished, but she doubted that Skymaw would turn her nose up at it.
As soon as she found an opportunity, Thymara left the ground and moved up into the lower branches of the trees. Here, her clawed feet helped her move efficiently and quietly. She did not travel directly above the game trail, but to the side of it where she could watch it while, she hoped, not alerting any creatures to her presence.
Light dimmed as she moved away from the open spaces along the river’s edge. The sounds of the forest changed too, as the rushing of the river was hushed by the intervening of the layers of foliage. Birds called to one another, and up above her, she heard the rustling passage of squirrels, monkeys and other small creatures. Something very like peace settled over her. Her father had always been right; this was what she was made for. She smiled at the familiar sounds of the tree creatures and moved deeper into the forest. She would travel only so far into the woods as she deemed she could carry a kill back; if at that point she’d still had no luck, she’d turn her deadly skills on the little animals she could see and hear and hope to take back a game sack full of them. Meat was meat whether it came in a large or small packet.
She had almost reached that turning point when she first smelled and then heard the elk. He was an old fellow, energetically and noisily enjoying scratching his hump against an overhanging branch. Like most of his kind, he was not accustomed to looking up for danger; he was a large animal, and most creatures that could threaten him would be landbound as he was. Thymara felt almost sorry for him as she silently manoeuvred her way from tree to tree until she was directly above him. She shifted, moving silently, until she had a vantage with a clear shot at him. She drew the arrow back, took a breath and held it, and then let it fly. She shot her arrow directly down, aiming for a place just behind his humped shoulders, hoping it would penetrate his rib-cage and hit his lungs if not his heart. Her missile struck solidly with a sound like someone hitting a thick drum-skin.
Her prey gave a sudden jerk and shuddered, as if the blow were no more than a fly landing on his coat. Then as the pain blasted through him, he fled in a staggering run down the game trail toward the river. She grinned harshly; at least he was moving in the right direction! And she followed him, keeping to the trees. She wouldn’t drop down to his level until she was sure he was dead or nearly so.
He ran more and more clumsily and fell once, his front legs folding under him. She thought he was done then, but he staggered up and moved on, blowing blood from his nose and mouth as he huffed out his pain. The second time he went down, he stayed down. Knife drawn, she moved closer and then went down to him. His large brown eyes regarded her malevolently. ‘I’ll end it,’ she told him. It took all her strength to drive her knife into the hollow behind the angle of his jaw. The blade punched through thick hide and muscle, but when she jerked it out, she was rewarded with leaping gouts of blood. The elk closed his eyes; each burst of blood was less than the one before, and when it slowed to a trickle, she knew he was gone. She had a moment of regret that she pushed aside. Death fed life. He was meat now, and all hers.
Skymaw would be pleased with her. But only if she got the meat back to the dragon; there was no bringing Skymaw to this kill. The thick forest and undergrowth were impenetrable for a creature the size of a dragon. The only way to get the meat back to her would be for Thymara to pack it out. She sized up the animal. She could probably drag a front leg and shoulder back on her own. Then she’d find Tats and they’d come back to cut up the rest and drag it back. Tats could take a share for Fente, and they’d have meat to share at the campfire with the other keepers. She felt a surge of pride at that thought. She doubted that anyone else would have fared as well at the hunt as she had.
The marsh elk’s hide was thicker than she had bargained on. Her knife seemed small in comparison to the task and it dulled fast. Twice she had to stop and sharpen it, and each time she thought of the daylight passing. It was already dim back here in the rainforest. If she didn’t get back and reclaim the rest of the meat before dark, it would be hopeless trying to find it at night. And by morning, scavengers would have reduced it to bones. Ants and buzzing insects were already trooping to the feast.
When she had finally sliced all round the tough hide and cut the meat down to the bone, she had to use every bit of strength she had to wrestle her blade into the animal’s shoulder socket to get the front leg free of the carcass. It finally came loose with a suddenness that made her sit down flat on the ground, the leg half on top of her. She wiped her knife on her trouser leg and sheathed it and then wiped her hands. She pushed sweaty hair back from her scaled brow. The scales felt tighter and more complete; they were growing. In a few more months, she might not even sweat there any more. For a moment, she wondered what she looked like, and then pushed that concern aside. There was nothing she could do to change how she looked; best not to think about it.
She pushed the leg to one side and stood up, groaning at how much her back ached. She didn’t look forward to the trudge back to the riverbank through the underbrush. She glanced again at her kill. ‘One leg down, three to go,’ she said wryly.
‘And the head. Don’t forget the head.’ Greft’s words warned her only a fraction of a second before he dropped down beside her, landing as lightly as a lizard. He looked at her kill and hissed in astonishment. When he lifted his eyes to her, they gleamed with admiration. ‘You weren’t bragging when you said you were a hunter. I congratulate you, Thymara! If anyone had asked me, I would have said this was an impossible task for a girl like you.’
‘Thank you,’ she replied uncertainly. Was he complimenting her or suggesting this was a fluke? A bit testily, she added, ‘A bow doesn’t know who pulls the string. Anyone who is strong enough and can shoot straight can bring down an animal.’
‘True. Undoubtedly true, as the evidence lies right here before us. All I’m saying is that I never thought of it that way before.’ He licked his narrow lips and his eyes gleamed blue as he smiled. His glance was approving, but it wandered over her in a way she found unsettling. His voice was both warm and wistful. ‘Thymara, you have every right to be proud of this kill.’ He gestured at his hip. Tail feathers protruded from the game bag he carried. ‘I wish I could say I had fared as well as you had. But the day is winding to a close and two birds are all I have to show for it.’
‘We have a few hours of light left,’ Thymara replied. ‘And I’d best use them or I’ll lose the meat. I’ll see you back at the camp, Greft.’ She knelt and put a hasty wrap of line around the elk’s leg just above the hoof, and then knotted a loop big enough to fit over her shoulder. All the while she felt him standing there, watching her silently. She thrust her arm through the loop of rope as she stood. ‘See you back at camp,’ she repeated.
But she hadn’t gone two strides before he asked, ‘You’re just leaving all the rest of the meat?’
She didn’t want to look back at him but she didn’t want him to know that she felt slightly afraid of him. He was bigger than she was and heavily muscled. He had never threatened her but the weight of his attention made her uneasy. She found that she wasn’t comfortable being alone with him. The worst of it was that beneath her fear there was a darker current of attraction to him. He was handsome in a Rain Wilds-touched way. The gleam of his eyes and how even dim light shifted over his scaled countenance made her want to look at him. But how he returned her look always spoke of forbidden things. His presence stirred her in a way that was dangerous for her. Best to get away from him.
She tried to let none of that show in her eyes or sound in her voice as she said casually, ‘Tats and I will be coming back for it.’
Greft straightened slightly and glanced quickly about the surrounding forest. ‘Tats is hunting with you? Where is he?’
‘Tats is probably still back at the river.’ She shouldn’t have answered his question, she thought, for it suddenly made her feel more alone. ‘When I tell him I’ve got meat, he’ll come and help me with it.’
Greft smiled, relaxing, but his expression only made her more tense. ‘Why bother? I can help you with it now. I don’t mind helping you.’
‘I need to talk to Thymara’s dragon.’
Alise snapped her head around, startled and annoyed at the interruption. It was so hard to get Skymaw talking. Things had been going so well, with Skymaw telling a story of someone in Kelsingra creating a fountain around a life-size sculpture of three dragons. To keep her talking, Alise had been standing beside her while the dragon rested her head on her front paws, carefully grooming the scales around her eyes. Fishing in the silty river splashed water into the dragon’s eyes and ears, and when it dried, fine dust remained near her eyes. It was careful, ticklish work to remove it, one better done by human fingers than the dragon’s own claws. ‘I beg your pardon?’
The dragon keeper stared at her for a moment. Rapskal, she thought to herself. That was his name. She’d spoken to him twice before, and each time found the experience a bit unsettling. His eyes were a very light blue, and sometimes when he blinked, as he did now, the colour and the faint light that came from them seemed to be one and the same. He was very handsome, in a Rain Wilds way, and would be an extraordinary man. Right now, his face had that unfinished look of a youth venturing toward manhood. The jaw was shaping into firmness. His wild hair, she realized, made him look more boyish than he truly was.
Sedric spoke to the boy’s silence. ‘Why do you need to speak to Skymaw? She was in the midst of giving Alise some very important details about Kelsingra.’
‘Got to find Thymara. She’s going to miss out on the food.’
‘She’s not here,’ Sedric said, almost patiently. He looked at the pen he was holding. He was sitting on the crate that he’d hauled down from the Tarman with his lap-desk on his knees. The sheet of heavy paper in front of him was almost covered in his fine handwriting. Even with her having to stop to translate every word the dragon said, the session had been going well; in fact it had been the best they had ever had. Sedric dipped his pen again and finished the sentence he’d been on. He looked up at her expectantly.
Impatience scratched at her nerves as she told the young man, ‘I don’t know where Thymara is. Have you looked all around the encampment?’
He cocked his head at her as if she were a bit stupid. ‘Did that before I came here. Skymaw, please tell me where Thymara is?’
The dragon replied with a single word. ‘Hunting. We are busy here.’ She canted her head very slightly, to remind Alise that she had been tending her. Alise went back to work on her.
‘Hunting where?’ Rapskal persisted.
‘In the forest. Go away.’
‘It’s a big forest.’ Rapskal didn’t seem to have the sense not to annoy the blue dragon. Alise felt the dragon flex and knew her claws were digging into the wet mud. She distracted her. ‘Loose scale right here by the corner of your eye. Don’t blink while I lift it away.’ To her surprise, Skymaw obeyed. Alise held it up on the tip of her finger, marvelling at it. It was like both a fish scale and a feather. There were lines on in, possibly indicating how it had grown, but at the edge of it, it feathered into fine tendrils. It was a deep deep blue, deeper than the best sapphire she had ever seen. She leaned forward, looking at the place it had come from, suddenly seeing how the feathered edges interlocked into a smooth surface with the following scales. ‘This is incredible,’ she breathed in awe. ‘Sedric, can you draw this for me?’
‘I’d love to!’ he replied with enthusiasm. She was startled to find that he’d set down his desk and come to stand at her shoulder. ‘But, to do it justice, I’d want a steady surface, a bright lamp and my coloured inks. I have all that back on the Tarman. Let me put it in a safe place.’
He had reached out his hand for it when Skymaw’s head suddenly lifted. Her tongue, long and forked just like a lizard’s, was of a size commensurate with her body, and when it flicked out, it was like having a large, fleshy whip crack in the air right between her and Sedric. It happened so swiftly that suddenly the scale was gone, lifted deftly away from Alise’s fingertip with an accuracy that astonished her.
‘No!’ cried Sedric, aghast.
‘What is a part of me is mine.’ The dragon spoke sternly.
‘Oh, Skymaw,’ Alise cried sorrowfully. ‘We only wanted to draw it. Part of the knowledge that I seek to collect is knowledge of your physical body. You let Sedric draw your claw yesterday.’ She sighed. ‘I would have loved to have an accurate, to size drawing of a scale.’
‘Scale?’ Rapskal said. She was a bit surprised to find he was still standing there. ‘Maybe I have one … here.’ He’d bent down to brush at the rough fabric of his trousers. When he straightened up, he was offering her a gleaming ruby. It was substantially larger than Skymaw’s blue eye-scale, the size of a large rose petal, but no rose had ever gleamed so scarlet. She caught her breath at the sight of it. When she took in her hand the treasure so casually offered, she was surprised at the heft of it. It was less than a small coin’s weight, but that was surprising to her. The growth rings and the feathering were much more obvious than on Skymaw’s scale.
‘It fell off Heeby when I was riding her today during her flying practice. I guess my knee rubbed it off, but she said it didn’t hurt.’
‘Riding her? You were on a dragon’s back?’ She was astounded.
‘That’s disgusting!’ Skymaw was outraged. She drew her head up high and for an instant Alise feared she would strike one of them. She saw Sedric reflexively wince away.
Rapskal was unfazed. ‘Heeby doesn’t mind. She’s going to fly pretty soon, and she doesn’t want to leave me behind. We practise every night, and I sort of watch out for rocks and logs so she can concentrate on running and flapping.’
‘You are both idiots. Dragons do not run as a prelude to flying, and we do not allow anyone to ride us. It’s humiliating even to think that she does. She’s a disgrace to all of us. You are a moron and she is a half-witted lizard!’
‘What did she say?’ Sedric demanded.
Rapskal knotted his fists and stepped up to the dragon. ‘You take that back! You can’t talk about Heeby that way! She’s beautiful and smart, and she’s going to fly. Because she’s brave enough to try and smart enough to know I’m helping her because I love her.’
‘What is going on?’ Sedric demanded in a shaky voice.
‘Skymaw! Please! Restrain your wrath, beautiful queen! He is only a foolish boy, not even worthy of your anger!’ Alise was surprised at how calm her own voice sounded as she deliberately stepped between the incensed dragon and her target. She had closed her fist around the precious scale and as she spoke, she stuffed it into her bag without looking. She kept her eyes on the dragon. Skymaw’s eyes blazed scarlet and copper like a seething kettle of molten ore. Her immense head wove back and forth over them, reminding her of a snake deciding whether or not to strike. How could she have forgotten how huge an animal Skymaw was? One snap of her jaws would sever the boy in two. She spoke over her shoulder to him. ‘Rapskal. You should leave now. Thymara isn’t here. Thank you for loaning me the scale. I will be certain that it is returned to Heeby after Sedric has finished sketching it.’
‘But …’ Sedric began.
She pushed her words past him, speaking with all the authority of an older sister. ‘Rapskal. Go now! If I see Thymara, I’ll tell her you are looking for her. For now, do not bother the lovely, the gracious, the most powerful and awesome Skymaw.’
Perhaps the severity of her tone finally made him realize the danger he was in. ‘I’ll go,’ he said sullenly. He turned on his heel and strode away. But at a safe distance he stopped and flung back at Skymaw, ‘Heeby is going to fly a long time before you ever get your big blue powerful and gracious arse off the ground, Skymaw! She’ll be a real dragon long before you are, queen stick-up-your-bum!’ Then he turned and wisely ran as Skymaw hissed a furious but venomless mist at him.
Somehow, Greft had moved closer to her. He stared at her and she found herself meeting his gaze. There were blue Rain-Wilds lights behind his eyes, just like her own. Something changed in his smile and in his eyes as he said in a quieter voice, ‘I’d like to help you, Thymara.’
‘Oh, I’ll just ask Tats. But thank you for offering.’ She turned hastily away from him, uncomfortable with her refusal but certain that accepting his offer would make her even more uncomfortable. She didn’t want to be out here alone with him.
He refused her dismissal of him. ‘It will make no difference to you or your dragon who helps you,’ he pointed out, his voice hardening as he spoke to her back. ‘I’m here, right now. I’m stronger than Tats. Together, we can get this meat back to the dragons much more swiftly than if you go there, get him, come back here and then start hauling it. It only makes sense that two hunters such as ourselves should help one another. Why do you prefer him to me?’
She didn’t have to answer him. She didn’t want to answer him but the words came out anyway. ‘Tats and I have been friends for a long time. He used to work for my father sometimes.’
‘I see. You feel loyalty to him based on a shared past.’ A lecturing note had come into his voice. She didn’t like his smile. It seemed cruel somehow. She didn’t like how he assumed he had the right to talk to her in such a tone, to keep her standing here when she wanted to leave. ‘You and he had a bond in the past. And you think that bond still binds you. But from what I’ve seen going on, he doesn’t feel the same. This life you are entering into now is not your past, and is nothing like your past. You are moving toward your future, Thymara. Sometimes I think you don’t comprehend your own freedom now.’
He moved a few steps closer to her. ‘You can break free of everything you’ve always taken for granted. You can put aside rules that bound you and kept you from thinking for yourself, rules that kept you from doing what you wanted, rules that actually kept you from doing what was best for yourself. Tats was someone your father chose, Thymara. I’m sure he’s a very nice fellow in his own way, but he’s not one of us and never will be. It was kind of your father to take him on and give him work after his criminal mother abandoned him. It probably kept him from becoming a thief himself. But all of that is in the past, Thymara. I am sure your father is a good man. But you are under no obligation to continue his kindness to Tats. Surely your family has already done enough for him? If he cannot take care of himself by now, then your putting more effort into him is a waste of your time. You’ve left your old life behind, Thymara, with your father’s blessing.’
He edged closer to her as he spoke. She stepped back. He halted where he was, considering her. He looked into her face, at the set, flat line of her mouth and her narrowed eyes and turned his head slightly, as if he would cajole her. Then he smiled and shook his head slowly. ‘Not yet, perhaps, Thymara, but eventually. You’ll see that you and I are more alike than any of the others. I’ll let you take your time to discover that. We have a lot of time ahead of us.’
Then he dropped down on one knee beside her fallen elk and drew his knife. Without asking her permission, he began to work on cutting free a meaty hind quarter. He kept speaking to her as he worked, his voice deep and sometimes deeper with the effort of cutting. Her anger began to build but he didn’t look at her and his words continued, his voice so reasonable. ‘You’ve struck out on your own, to build something new for yourself. As we all have! You are not established with a home and possessions like your family was. You are making your own way in the world. You are making your own future. You will need, eventually, a partner who can pull his own share. You won’t always be able to waste your time with halfwits and outsiders. You cannot afford to drag dead weight with you into that new future. I know you’re angry now about what I’m telling you. But I don’t have to prove it to you. The Rain Wilds will do that. All I have to do is wait.’
She pushed out her words and they came more forcefully than she intended. ‘That is my kill and my meat. Get away from it.’
His knife didn’t stop moving. ‘Thymara, haven’t you heard a word I said? We need to move into the future, not cling to a past that doesn’t apply to us any more. Ask yourself honestly. Why are you so intent on running back to Tats and having him help you with this?’
‘I like him. He’s helped me in the past. He’s my friend. If he made a kill like this, he would share it with me.’
He was still sawing away with his knife. She could tell it was dulling on the thick elk hide. He glanced up at her for a moment; there was no anger in his face, only interest. ‘Would he? Or would he share it with Jerd? Open your eyes. You have a choice here. You could like me. I could help you, a lot more than Tats could, because ultimately you and I are far more alike than you and he could ever be. I could be your friend. I could be more than your friend.’ He lifted his eyes to meet hers. His voice went deeper and softer on the last words.
Thymara hated how she reacted, how her belly clenched and a shiver went up her back. A handsome, older man had just as much as said that he wanted her. A man, not a boy. A powerful man, one who was assuming a leadership role among the keepers. ‘Tats is my friend,’ she managed to assert. She turned, refusing to see if he would listen to her. ‘And that is my meat. Stay away from it.’ She refused to think about his words, about any of his words. Jerd? Was there something Greft knew about Tats and Jerd that she did not? Push that thought away. Gripping her hunting weapons in one hand, she settled the loop of rope over her shoulder and trudged away from him. He let her go with no further words. She could not move swiftly; she had to push her way through low-growing bushes and dangling branches. She tried to move from hummock to hummock, avoiding the swampiest ground. It wasn’t easy.
After a short time, the rope began to chafe on her shoulder. The meat she dragged seemed to snag on every stump or root tangle she passed and she had to give a strong jerk to break it free. By the time she saw the lighter foliage that indicated she was nearly at the river, she was sweaty, scratched and bitten by insects. She emerged into the swale of tall, coarse rivergrass and pushed on toward where she had left Skymaw sleeping. She’d give her dragon the meat first, and then go find Tats to help her bring the rest back. She smiled to herself, imagining Skymaw’s surprise at a second hearty meal in one day.
But when she spotted her dragon, she wasn’t alone. Skymaw was awake, though she still sprawled comfortably on the deep grass. Seated near her head on a wooden box was the Bingtown woman, dressed in loose trousers and a sensible cotton blouse. Next to her Sedric perched uncomfortably on a wooden crate labelled ‘salt fish’. His lap-desk was on his knees. Paper and ink bottle were before him; his pen was moving swiftly over the paper. His trimly-fitting jacket was the colour of a bluefly. The white shirt he wore was open at his neck. He’d folded the cuffs of it back over his jacket cuffs, leaving his lean wrists and capable hands free to work. A single line marred his smooth brow. His mouth was pursed slightly, his brows knit in concentration. Alise was apparently dictating the next phrase. Thymara heard ‘… crushing or severing the spine to kill it quickly.’
As she scented the meat, Skymaw’s head turned and she lunged to her feet. That motion caused both Sedric and Alise to turn toward her. Skymaw gave her no greeting but simply took three strides and then fell onto the meat and began feeding. Alise’s mouth went into an ‘O’ of surprise and then she laughed merrily, as if watching a favourite child indulge in a sweet. ‘She’s hungry again!’ she called to Thymara, as if expecting the girl to share her pleasure.
‘She’s always hungry,’ Thymara replied, trying not to sound sour. She felt an echo of assent from the feeding dragon. Sedric, at least, looked happy to see her. His eyes lit and his pursed lips became a welcoming smile.
‘I’m so glad you’re finally here. I looked everywhere for you earlier. This process will go a lot faster if you translate.’
She hated to disappoint him. ‘I can’t. I mean, I only brought part of the meat back with me. I have to find Tats and have him help me with the rest before scavengers take it.’ She tried not to imagine that a two-legged scavenger was already hacking off parts of her kill. He wouldn’t dare, she told herself. They were too small a company for anyone to steal openly from another. No one would tolerate it.
Would they?
Sedric had said something else. He was looking at her expectantly, waiting for a reply. The twist of anxiety in her belly made her suddenly dismiss him and his concerns. ‘I have to find Tats and go back for the rest of the meat,’ she said hastily, and refused even to wonder if that answered his question at all. She left them and headed toward the shore and the other dragons.
Behind her, Alise called out to her, ‘Rapskal is looking for you!’
Thymara nodded, and kept on going.
Tats was not with Fente. The small green dragon was still dozing, and when Thymara tried to rouse her to ask if she knew where Tats was, the creature made a sincere snap in her direction. Thymara jumped back uninjured and left her quickly. She wondered uneasily if the dragon would have eaten her if she’d drawn blood. She knew from Skymaw that the green queen had a reputation for being vicious when provoked. It was something she should talk to Tats about. If she could find him.
She found him and Sylve with the little silver dragon. Guilt tinged with annoyance suffused Thymara. She’d said she would care for the silver and Sylve had said she’d help. She’d only spoken out because Tats and Jerd had said they’d team up on the copper one. But she’d done little more than to check him for parasites around his eyes and nostrils each night. She hadn’t even thought to offer him some of the meat she’d brought back. Sylve was fussing over his tail. Nearby, a little fire smouldered reluctantly on a tussock of grass. A pot of foul-smelling soup had been set on it.
‘How is he?’ she asked uncomfortably as she approached.
‘It’s as we feared,’ Sylve said. ‘It looks like he let his tail dip below the surface of the river water, and more than once by the look of it. The cut is inflamed.’ She opened the cloth she’d been trying to wrap around the injury and Thymara winced. She wondered if her earlier ministrations hadn’t done him more harm than good. It must have been painful when the raw flesh met the acid river. She frowned: she couldn’t recall hearing him cry out. On a positive note, the dragon was sleeping heavily; from the scraps of gut under his front claws, he had evidently got at least a share of the fish run.
‘I wish there were a way to seal the bandaging around his tail to keep the water out,’ she said hopelessly.
Tats grinned at her. ‘Maybe there is. I asked Captain Leftrin for some tar or pitch, and he gave me a little pot of it. It’s heating now. He gave us canvas, too.’ His grin grew wider. ‘I think Captain Leftrin likes that Bingtown woman. When I was asking for the stuff, I thought he was going to tell me to shove off. But that woman, that Alise, got all fluttery about the “poor little dragon” and the captain came up with a solution pretty fast.’
‘Oh,’ she said. Sylve was nodding approvingly at what Tats said.
‘The captain said we should wrap it well, and then tar over the canvas and over his scales to either side. We’re hoping that it will stick to his scales well enough to make a watertight bond.’
The sheer strangeness of such a patch drove, for a moment, all other concerns out of her head. She stared at Tats. ‘Do you think it will work?’
He shrugged and grinned. ‘Nothing to lose by trying. I think the tar is warm enough. I don’t want to burn him. In fact, I hope to do this without waking him up.’
‘How did you get involved in this?’
Sylve answered. ‘I asked him.’ Despite the scaling on her face, a blush rosed her cheeks. ‘I had to,’ she added defensively. ‘I couldn’t find you, and I didn’t know what to do for him.’ She looked down at the dragon’s injured tail. ‘So I went to find Tats.’
As plainly as if she had spoken the words aloud, Thymara saw that the girl was infatuated with the tattooed boy. It almost made her laugh, except that it was so disturbing. Sylve could not have been more than twelve, even if her pink-scaled scalp and copper eyes made her seem older. Didn’t she know how hopeless it was for a girl like her to have a crush on someone like Tats? She could never have him; she could never have anyone, any more than Thymara could. What was she thinking?
But Thymara knew the answer to that, too. She wasn’t thinking at all. Only yearning after a handsome young man who’d shown her kindness and made nothing of her differences. Thymara couldn’t fault her. Hadn’t she felt the same, sometimes?
Didn’t she now?
She must have been looking at him strangely, because Tats suddenly flushed and said, ‘I wanted to help. There wasn’t much I could do for the little copper one anyway. So I decided to put my time here.’
‘What’s wrong with him?’
The grin had faded from Tats’ face. ‘The same things that have been wrong with him since he hatched. He’s dull-witted. And his body doesn’t work very well. I cleared a load of parasites from around his eyes and nose and uh, other places. He didn’t even stir. I think he’s just exhausted from trying to keep up with the others today. I can’t even find out if he’s hungry. He’s that dead tired.’
The words echoed through her like a prophecy. ‘I killed an elk,’ she blurted out.
In the shocked silence that followed her words, she quickly added, ‘I need help to bring the meat back. There would be some for each of our dragons, and some for us keepers, too. But we’d have to leave soon if we want to get back to camp before dark. It’s going to take us several trips back and forth to get it here.’
Tats looked at the tar pot and then at Sylve’s face. ‘We’ve got to finish this first,’ he decided. ‘Then maybe Sylve and some of the others would help us go for the meat. That way we’d only have to make one trip.’
‘The more people, the less meat for each dragon,’ she pointed out bluntly.
Tats looked surprised that she’d think of it that way. She was surprised that he’d think of it any other way. For a long moment, the silence held. Then Sylve said quietly, ‘I can do the silver’s tail alone. You can go get your meat.’
Thymara relented. ‘Let’s just get it done and then we’ll all go.’
Sylve kept her eyes down and her child’s voice thickened as she said, ‘Thank you. Mercor made a kill today and he didn’t complain of hunger, but I don’t think it really satisfied him. I tried to fish, but the boys had the best places all staked out. When Captain Leftrin said that there would be a serving of meat portioned out to each dragon tomorrow morning, I hoped it would be enough for him.’
‘Well, let’s get this dragon patched up and then we’ll go fetch meat for the others,’ Thymara surrendered.
The heat had loosened the tar. Sylve and Thymara held the bandage firm around the silver dragon’s tail while Tats daubed the tar on with a stick. He worked carefully and to Thymara it seemed that it took an age before the entire bandage was well covered with tar and sealed to the dragon’s thick tail. The silver, thank Sa, hadn’t even fluttered an eyelid. That thought gave her a moment’s concern. The two least-capable dragons seemed more exhausted every day. How long could they keep up this pace? What would happen to them when they could not? She had no answer to that. She forced her mind back to today’s problem.
Tats could almost keep up with her as she led them through the forest, moving through the trees rather than on the ground. Sylve trailed him, but not by much. It was easy to find the way back; she just watched for the trail she had made dragging the meat back to Skymaw. She judged they were about halfway there when she heard voices below her. She moved down the tree trunk, her heart sinking. Her worst fears were realized. Greft was below her. He was dragging a hindquarter of her elk. Behind him came Boxter and Kase. Boxter had the other front leg of the elk and Kase had taken part of a hind leg, but not the full quarter. They were chattering about something to one another, their voices full of triumph when she dropped out of her tree and into the path before them. Greft stopped short in front of her.
She didn’t mince words. ‘What do you think you’re doing with my kill?’
She heard Tats coming quickly down the tree. So did Greft. He looked up to watch Tats’ descent, his face deceptively mild. ‘I’m taking it back to the dragons. Isn’t that what you intended?’ He managed to put a mild rebuke into his voice.
‘I intended to take it back to my dragon. Not yours.’
He didn’t reply right away. He gave time for Tats to reach the ground and take a stance behind Thymara. There was a shower of twigs, a brief shriek, and then a thud as Sylve half-fell and half-slid the rest of the way down. Once she was there, Greft glanced up at the tree, as if to assure himself that this was the whole of their party. Behind him, Boxter and Kase had halted. Boxter looked confused, Kase defiant.
Greft’s eyes roved over them. He seemed to be making a mental tally of who they were and how each could best be played, as if he were studying a game board. When he spoke, his voice was calm, his words reasonable. ‘You took a quarter of the kill for your dragon and left the rest here. You told me you were going to go get Tats. But I knew from looking at it that there was more than you and Tats could haul back in a single trip. Even recruiting Sylve doesn’t change that! So I went back, got Boxter and Kase, and started in on the work. I don’t understand why you seem to be upset, Thymara. Isn’t this what Tats advocated, quite some time back? Surely that is what you told me, that you’d give a share to those who helped bring the meat back. It seemed fair to me.’
She stood her ground. ‘That isn’t what I said. I said I intended to get Tats, and that he and I would haul my kill back to our dragons. I intended to keep back some of the meat for the other keepers to eat tonight. But I didn’t offer to share my kill with you, or with your friends.’
Greft looked surprised, almost hurt. ‘But surely we’re all friends here, Thymara! We are too small a company not to be. You told me yourself, at the campfire one evening, that you’d never before had friends such as you had now! I thought you meant it.’
Tats was silent behind her. She didn’t want to look back at him; he’d think she was seeking his guidance. Nor did she want to see Sylve’s face right now. Surely they could see how Greft was twisting everything? Wanting to take care of her friends first was not selfishness. Speak plainly and all would be right. She took a breath. ‘I killed that elk by myself, Greft. And I decide who I’ll share the meat with. I chose Tats. And Sylve, because she helped me. I didn’t choose you, or Boxter or Kase. And you can’t have the meat.’
Greft made a show of looking at the sky. He couldn’t see it through the canopy, but all of them knew that evening would soon plunge them into darkness. ‘You’d rather let the meat rot or be eaten by scavengers than let us have some of it? There’s still more than half an elk there, Thymara, more than you three can haul back in one trip, I’ll wager. And you haven’t time to make another trip. Be sensible, not selfish. It hurts you nothing to share this. Boxter’s dragon didn’t make a kill today, and Kase’s got a fish, but not a big one. They’re hungry.’
She knew she should choose her words carefully but she was so angry at how he was making it seem. ‘Then they should go hunting for meat for their dragons, just as I did! Not wait and take mine! I’ve a dragon to feed, too, you know. In fact, I’ve two dragons to feed.’
‘And both of them were sleeping with bulging bellies when last I saw them,’ Greft replied smoothly.
‘Mine isn’t!’ Sylve blurted out suddenly. ‘Mercor has fed, but not well, even though he is too brave and noble to complain. And Tats’ little copper fellow probably got nothing at all. He needs meat, not this argument! Please, can’t we just take the meat back to the camp and settle it there?’
‘That seems wisest to me,’ Greft abruptly agreed. He glanced back at Kase and Boxter. ‘Do you both agree?’
Boxter nodded. Kase, his copper eyes gleaming in the gathering gloom, hunched his shoulders. Greft turned back to Thymara. ‘Then it’s all settled. We’ll see you when you get back to the river.’
‘It’s not all settled!’ Thymara snarled, but Tats put a warm hand on her shoulder. She felt the weight of it but she wondered if he was reassuring her that he was with her or holding her back from what he regarded as foolishness. He spoke past her to Greft.
‘It will be all settled when we get back to the river. We all know night is coming on and we can’t waste time in arguing right now. But it’s not all settled, Greft. I agree that meat should be shared, but not the way you’re doing it.’
Greft’s narrow lips moved. It might have been a smile or a sneer. ‘Of course, Tats. Of course. We’ll see you back at the riverside.’ He suddenly leaned into the load he was pulling and Thymara found herself stepping aside, back into the pressing brush behind her, to allow him to pass. Boxter and Kase came behind him, and both of them were plainly grinning. Kase spoke in a low voice as he passed her. ‘Only fair to get a share of meat if you’ve done work for it,’ he observed.
‘No one asked you to do any work!’ she growled after him. He kept walking. ‘It’s like paying a thief because he worked hard to rob your house!’ She raised her voice to hurl the words after him.
‘No! It’s like giving your workers a share of the harvest!’ he shouted back. She drew breath to point out that merely taking the harvest was not working for it when Tats spoke again. She realized then that he’d never let go of her shoulder, for he tightened his grip on her as he said, ‘Not now, Thymara. Focus on the most important thing. We need to get that meat back to the river before nightfall. And before the insects get any worse.’
‘Parasites!’ she snarled after them, and then turned away. ‘The meat is this way. Or what’s left of it!’ She strode angrily through the forest.
Tats was right. The stinging little pests had already begun to swarm around them. Biting insects were never absent in the Rain Wilds, but the evening always brought them out in droves. Well, at least the thieves had broken a better trail for them to follow. She wanted to rant and rave as she thudded along but saved her breath.
When they reached the carcass, she heard the small sounds of several little scavengers scampering away. The smallest ones, the ants and beetles, had already flocked to the feast and were undeterred by the arrival of the humans. They swarmed over the elk’s body, congregating in black, shimmering masses wherever the raw flesh was exposed.
Tats had thought to bring a small hatchet. It was messy, for the blade flung blood and bits of meat on every swing, but between it and her knife they cut the rest of the elk into manageable hunks much faster than she could have done alone. She grumbled as she did so. Greft and his cohorts had taken the most manageable parts of the elk. They cut the head and neck free, and then divided the trunk into the rib-cage and haunches. It stank as they cut through the torso. The guts would spill and string; there was nothing they could do about it. They could have left them, but Thymara knew that to the dragons they were a delicacy.
Tats had brought more rope as well. It was almost annoying to think of how well prepared he always seemed to be. They spoke little, working swiftly. Thymara tried to focus on what she was doing rather than let her simmering anger interfere. Tats was his quiet, competent self, limiting his words to conversation about the task at hand. Sylve hung back on the edges of the operation, stepping in to help whenever she was asked, but keeping silent in a way that began to bother Thymara. She wondered if the blood and stink bothered the girl.
‘Sylve, are you all right? You know, some people just can’t do this kind of thing. It makes them sick. If you need to step back from it, just say so.’
She saw Syvle give her head a shake, sending her hanks of hair flying wildly around her pink scalp. She had a strange look on her face, as if she didn’t want to be there but couldn’t bring herself to leave.
‘I think,’ Tats said, between grunts as he fastened rope harnesses to each chunk of meat, ‘That Greft’s arguments … made Sylve uncomfortable. She’s wondering – hold that while I tie this knot, would you? – if you resent her taking a share of the meat.’
The girl turned her face aside abruptly, her hurt so obvious that it smote Thymara. ‘Sylve! Of course not! I invited you to come and help with this, and of course you deserve some of the meat. I said I’d take care of the silver, and instead that task fell to you. Even if you hadn’t come, if you told me that your dragon needed meat, I’d help you. You know that.’
Sylve lifted bloodstained hands to wipe her cheeks before turning back to Thymara. Thymara winced. She knew that when you were that far along in being scale-faced, it hurt when you cried. Sylve sniffed. ‘You said they were thieves,’ she said thickly. ‘Well, how am I different?’
‘It’s different because you didn’t take it without asking! It’s different because you were helping me with the silver dragon for no other reason than that is how you are. It’s different because you put in before you take out. Those three don’t care anything about any dragons but their own.’
Sylve lifted the front edge of her tunic to dab at her messy face. She spoke from its shelter. ‘How is that different from us? We’re only talking about feeding our own dragons.’
‘But that was the deal!’ Thymara almost exploded. ‘That was the agreement that each of us signed. Each of us said we’d be responsible for a dragon. And here we are, we each have two to worry about. Without some ignorant louts coming in and poaching our hard-earned meat. Well, they’re not going to get away with it!’ As she’d spoken, Thymara had slid her arms into the makeshift harness that Tats had created. She had the front end of the carcass with the ribcage. Tats had taken the heavy hindquarter for himself. Without saying a word, they’d agreed that little Sylve could drag the head and neck back. It was lighter than what they were hauling, but still not an easy load to get back to the river through all the brush and swamp.
‘Actually, I think it’s likely they will.’ Tats spoke as he leaned into his load and followed her. Sylve came last of all, getting the advantage of the broken trail through the brush.
‘Will what?’
‘Will get away with it. What we were just talking about. Greft and Kase and Boxter will get away with taking your meat.’
‘No they won’t! Not when I tell everyone!’
‘By the time we get back, they will have told everyone the story their way. And it will seem to everyone who didn’t get a kill for their dragon today that it would only be sensible for you to share with everyone.’ He added something else in a softer voice.
‘What?’ she demanded, halting to look back at him.
‘I said,’ he said defiantly, his ears turning a bit pink, ‘that in some ways it would be only sensible.’
‘What? What are you saying? That I should do all the work of hunting and making a kill, and then just give it away to everyone else?’
‘Keep pulling. Night’s coming on. Yes, that is what I’m saying. Because you’re a good hunter, probably the best we have. If you were free to hunt, and everyone else had to do the butchering and hauling the meat, you’d be able to get a lot more prey. And all the dragons would have a better chance of a real meal.’
‘But Skymaw would get less! A lot less. She should have had almost half an elk today. Your way, she’d get one fifteenth. She’d starve on that!’
‘She’d get one fifteenth of what everyone caught. I think you may be our best hunter, but you’re not our only one. Think about it, Thymara. There is you, and the three professional hunters, and some of the rest of us are not too bad at fishing and small game. Each dragon would be almost certain of getting at least something to eat every night.’
She was sweating now as she dragged the meat through the forest. It was getting dark, and the mosquitoes and gnats had found her. She swiped angrily at her brow and then slapped the back of her neck, crushing half a dozen of the persistent blood-suckers. ‘I can’t believe you’re taking Greft’s side,’ she observed bitterly.
‘I’m not. I’m taking my side. Basically, it’s the deal you were ready to offer me, only expanded to include everyone.’
She went on silently pulling her load, pushing her way past leaning branches and gritting her teeth every time she missed her footing and plunged ankle deep in muck. She was stingingly aware that Sylve could hear every word. She couldn’t just say to Tats that it was different, that he was her friend and her ally and she didn’t mind sharing with him. Not that she minded sharing with Sylve tonight; the girl had done her best to take care of the injured silver dragon. In a way, Thymara supposed that she was her partner now, since they’d both agreed to do what they could for the creature. In another moment, she became uncomfortably aware that she knew Sylve had only the smallest chance of keeping even one dragon alive, let alone volunteering to help with the silver, too. Maybe she owed the girl her help. She didn’t like the way that idea jabbed her. She didn’t want anyone depending on her, let alone have someone that she owed help to. And what about Rapskal? If he asked her for meat for his runty little Heeby, would she say no? He partnered with her every day in her boat, and always did at least half the work there. So what did she owe him? Tats spoke at just the wrong moment.
‘You want me to take the lead for a while?’
‘No,’ she replied curtly. No, she didn’t want anyone doing anything for her. Because who knew what she would owe them then?
He should have known better than to say anything more. But a few moments later, he asked in a low voice, ‘So, what are you going to do when we get back to camp?’
She’d been pondering that question herself. Having him poke her with it didn’t help her indecision. ‘What if I did nothing? Would that make me a coward?’
He was quiet for a time. She slapped mosquitoes on the back of her neck and brushed her hands wildly over her ears, trying to drive them and their persistent buzzing away. ‘I think you’d be doing the sensible thing,’ he said quietly.
It surprised Thymara when Sylve spoke. ‘He’ll make you look selfish if you say anything. Turn everyone against you. Like he did with Tats, that night. Saying he wasn’t one of us.’ The girl was huffing and puffing. Her words came in short bursts. Thymara was rapidly realizing that Sylve was not the little girl she had thought she was. She was younger, but she listened and she thought about what she heard. ‘Ouch! Stupid branch!’ she complained abruptly and then went on, ‘Greft is like that. He can seem so nice, but there’s a mean part of him. He talks like he wants good things for everyone. Changes, he says. But then he has those other times. And you see that he has a mean part of him. He scares me. He talked to me once, for a long time, and, well, sometimes I think that if I stay away from him, that’s the safest thing to do. Other times I think that if I don’t find a way to be one of his friends, that will be the most dangerous thing.’
Silence fell except for their breathing, the sounds of their loads bumping and dragging and the normal night sounds of the forest. Insects buzzed all around Thymara’s head, almost as maddening as the thoughts buzzing inside her head. Thymara wondered just what Greft had said to Sylve in their ‘talk’. She feared she knew, and felt fresh outrage. Tats broke their mutual reverie. ‘I’m scared of him for the same reasons. And one other. He has plans. He’s not just a fellow taking on a bad job for money or because it looks like an adventure. He’s thinking something about all this.’
Thymara nodded. ‘He says he wants to make a place where he can change the rules.’
For a time, they plodded on in silence, each pondering this. At last Tats said softly, ‘Rules exist for a reason.’
‘We don’t have any rules,’ Sylve injected.
‘Of course we do!’ Thymara objected.
‘No, we don’t. Back home, there were our parents. And the Rain Wild Council, and the Traders, each with a vote to say what got done or didn’t happen. But we left all that behind. We signed contracts, but who is really in charge? Not Captain Leftrin. He’s only in charge of the boat, not us or the dragons. So who says what the rules are? Who enforces them?’
‘The rules are what they’ve always been,’ Thymara replied doggedly, but she had an uneasy feeling that the girl was seeing things more clearly than she was. When Greft spoke of making changes, what could he be talking about except changing the rules they’d accepted all their lives? But he couldn’t do that. Could he?
There was light breaking through the trees ahead of them, the fading evening light of the Rain Wilds forest. Somehow her legs found the strength to pick up their pace.
‘Hey! Hey! Where have you been? I was starting to get worried about you all! The hunters came in, and brought a whole load of riverpigs. You should see, Thymara! There’s a whole one cooking on a spit for all to share and the dragons got half a pig each. Hey! What you dragging? Did you kill something?’
It was Rapskal, jumping and hopping as if he were a boy half his age. He stopped dead when he reached Thymara, staring at the meat she was dragging. ‘What was that thing?’
‘An elk,’ she replied shortly.
‘An elk. That’s big! You were lucky, I guess. Greft got one, too. He said he brought the meat back to share with everyone, but it was all dirty and beat up and then the hunters brought the riverpig and started building a big fire, so Greft’s elk got fed to one of the dragons. Oh, you should come and see Heeby! He ate so much today, he looks like a stomach with a dragon wrapped around it. He snores when he’s full. You got to hear him to believe it!’ Rapskal laughed joyously. He clapped Thymara on the shoulder. ‘Glad you’re back, because I’m starving. I didn’t want to eat until I found you and made sure you got a share, too!’
They had emerged from the forest onto the muddy bank of tall reeds. Well, they had been tall when Thymara had last left. The activities of the dragons and their keepers had trampled most of them flat now. From where they stood, the barge with its welcoming lamps was easily visible. A camp-fire was burning; silhouetted against the flames was a large spit threaded with chunks of riverpig. Tats sniffed appreciatively and as if in response his stomach rumbled. They all laughed. The knot of Thymara’s anger loosened. She wondered if she could just let it go. If she did, would that mean Greft had won something from her?
‘Let’s go and eat!’ Rapskal urged them.
‘Soon,’ Thymara promised him. ‘First, this meat needs to go to any dragon that is still hungry. And we should check on Tats’ copper dragon. He said he wasn’t eating much.’
‘Well, I’m going to head down to the fire. I only left it to come and find you all. Hey, one of the hunters plays harp, that Carson, and there’s a woman from the barge who plays a pipe, and earlier they were playing some music together. So we might have music after we eat, too. Even dancing, if the mud lets us.’ He stopped suddenly, and a slow wide grin spread across his face. ‘Isn’t this just the best time ever in your life?’
‘Go enjoy it, Rapskal,’ Tats urged him.
Rapskal looked at Thymara. ‘I’m starving,’ he admitted, but then asked, ‘You’re coming soon, aren’t you?’
‘Of course I am. Go and eat.’
He needed no other prompting. He left them at a run. Thymara watched his fleeing shadow as he rejoined the keepers clustered around the fire. She heard a shout of laughter go up at someone’s comment. A chunk of driftwood was thrown on the fire and a dazzling fountain of sparks flew up into the darkening sky.
‘It could be a wonderful time,’ Sylve said quietly. ‘Tonight, with talk and food and music.’
Thymara sighed and surrendered. ‘I won’t ruin it, Sylve. I’m not going to say anything to anyone about the elk meat and Greft tonight. I’d just sound argumentative and selfish. Here we are tonight, out first night with plenty of food and music. My quarrel with Greft will wait for another time.’
‘That isn’t what I meant,’ the girl said hastily.
But when she didn’t say what she had meant, Tats filled in with, ‘Let’s take this meat to the dragons and go join the others by the fire.’
Skymaw was sleeping soundly, her belly distended. Fente roused, claimed the meat that Tats had brought, but then fell asleep with her chin on top of it. Mercor was awake. The gold dragon was standing alone, staring toward the fire and the keepers when they found him. He seemed pleased that Sylve had brought him meat. He thanked her for it, something that astonished Thymara, and then satisfied them all by immediately devouring the head and neck portion of the elk. His great jaws and sharp teeth made nothing of the animal’s skull. He closed his mouth on it and the elk’s head gave with a wet crushing sound. They left him chewing and went off in search of the copper dragon.
They found him not far from the silver one. The silver was sleeping, his bandaged tail curled around a distended belly. The copper sprawled near him. But his posture didn’t look right to Thymara. Tats voiced it. ‘He looks like he just fell down rather than curled up to sleep.’ Alone of the dragons, he looked thin and empty. His head was cushioned on his front feet. He was breathing huskily, his eyes half-closed. ‘Hey, copper,’ Tats said softly. The dragon didn’t react to him. He put his hand on the dragon’s head and scratched gently around his earholes. ‘He seemed to like this earlier,’ Tats explained. The dragon made a small huffing sound but didn’t budge.
Thymara dragged the elk section around and halted with it right in front of the copper. ‘You hungry?’ she asked the small dragon and found herself deliberately pushing the thought at him. ‘There’s meat here. All for you. Elk. Smell it? Smell the blood?’
He took a deeper breath. His eyes opened wider. He licked timidly at the meat, and then lifted his head. ‘There you go. Meat for you,’ Tats encouraged him. Thymara thought she felt an echo of response from him. Tats knelt by the elk and drew his belt-knife. He scored the meat several times. Finally, he sheathed his knife and reached up inside the rib-cage of the elk. He pulled at the guts and then smeared his bloody hand across the dragon’s snout. ‘There. You smell that? That’s meat for you. Eat it.’
The dragon’s tongue moved, cleaning his muzzle. Then a shudder ran over him. Tats pulled his hand back just in time as the dragon darted his head in to seize a mouthful of the dangling entrails. He made small snorting sounds as he ate, and seemed to gain strength with each mouthful. By the time they left him, he had his front feet braced on the elk carcass and was tearing free mouthfuls of meat and bone. He appeared to be gulping them down whole.
‘Well, at least he’s eating now,’ Thymara commented as they walked away from him toward the fire. The smell of the roasting meat was making her mouth water. She was suddenly extremely hungry and very tired.
‘You don’t think he’s going to survive, do you?’ Tats accused her.
‘I don’t know. I don’t know about any of the dragons.’
‘My Mercor is going to live,’ Sylve declared earnestly. ‘He’s come too far and through too much to die on the journey.’
‘I hope you’re right,’ Thymara agreed comfortingly.
‘I know I am,’ Sylve insisted. ‘He told me so.’
‘I wished my dragon talked to me like that,’ Thymara said enviously.
Before Sylve could respond, Rapskal appeared out of the darkness. His face shone with grease and a thick slab of meat was in his hands. ‘I brought this for you, Thymara. You have to try this! It’s so good!’
‘We’re coming,’ Tats assured him.
‘Captain Leftrin says we all get to sleep on his deck tonight, too!’ Rapskal told them. ‘Dry bed, hot food – what could make this night better?’
At the circle around the fire, music as sudden and bright as sparks suddenly burst up into the night.