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The crew of the other ship bent energetically to their sweeps. It was moving downriver as fast as the current and its oars could carry it. Overhead, the circling dragons took it in turns to feint dives at the fleeing boat, their trumpeted calls conveying merriment and mockery to Leftrin. After a time, he realized that the boat was scarcely their target any more; they appeared to be competing to see who could dive fastest and swoop closest to it before rising back to join the others. Spit managed to launch himself back into the air but he did not join the others. He flew laboriously, possibly injured from his collision, back toward the heart of Kelsingra. Leftrin continued to watch the Bingtown boat as the dragons harried it out of sight down the river. He waited, but even after it was out of sight, the dragons did not return.

‘They’ve changed,’ Hennesey observed quietly.

‘Indeed they have,’ Leftrin agreed.

‘They’re real now,’ the mate said. More quietly he added, ‘They frighten me.’

...

Day the 27th of the Fish Moon

Year the 7th of the Independent Alliance of Traders


From Keffria Vestrit, of the Bingtown Traders

To Jani Khuprus of the Rain Wild Traders, Trehaug


Jani, as we both well know, there is no privacy to bird-sent messages any more. If you have anything of great confidentiality, please send it in a packet by any of the liveships that ply the Rain Wild River. I have far more confidence in them than I do in the so-called Bird Keepers’ Guild. I will do the same, save for tidings that must reach you immediately and thus must, unfortunately, be subject to spying and gossip.

Herewith, the bones of what you must know. My messages to Malta are going unanswered. I am gravely concerned, especially since she was so close to giving birth. If you can send me any tidings to put my mind at ease, I would greatly appreciate it.

Other information also too grave to delay sharing: I have finally heard from Wintrow in the Pirate Isles. You may recall I wrote to him months ago to ask if he knew anything of Selden. As is often the case with letters sent through that region, both my message and his response were greatly delayed. He had no tidings of Elderlings but was alarmed at gossip of a ‘Dragon-Boy’ exhibited in a travelling display of freaks and oddities that had been journeying through his territory. Efforts on his part to learn more were fruitless. He fears that those he has queried have been less than frank for fear of incurring the wrath of the Pirate Queen’s consort. I beg you to use your contacts to ask if anyone has heard of such a travelling exhibition, and where they were last seen.


With great anxiety,

CHAPTER SEVEN
City Dwellers

Moving to the city had proved more challenging for the keepers than the dragons, Thymara thought. Kelsingra was a city built for dragons. The broad streets, the immense fountains, the scale of the public buildings all proclaimed that dragons had resided there. Entries were tall and wide, steps were set for a dragon’s tread, and every dimension of every chamber dwarfed humans to insignificance. For keepers who had grown up in the tiny tree-houses of Trehaug and Cassarick, the differences were stunning. ‘It doesn’t feel like I’m inside,’ Harrikin had observed the first time he entered the dragon baths. All the keepers had clustered together, looking up in wonder at the immense frescoes on the ceiling far overhead. Sylve, Thymara, Alum and Boxter had held hands and tried to measure the diameter of one of the supporting pillars. The first night that all the keepers had spent in the city together, they had slept in a cluster in the corner of an immense room, as if the building were a new kind of wilderness in which they had to huddle together against unknown dangers.

For the dragons, it was different. They had prospered since they had gained access to as much warmth as they wanted. After soaking in the baths they had gone on to recall and visit other sites in the city that had been created for the enjoyment of their kind. At the crest of one of the hills, there was a structure where sections of stone wall alternated with glass beneath a domed roof. The ceiling was a strange patchwork of glass and stone as well, while the heat-radiating floor contained shallow pits of sand in varying degrees of coarseness.

The building would have been incomprehensible to her a few years ago. Now she knew at a glance that it was a place for dragons to sprawl on heated sand while watching the life of the city below them or the slow wheeling of the stars by night. She had first seen it when Sintara had summoned her there a few days ago, much to Thymara’s surprise, and bade her search through the cupboards and shelves to see if the tools for dragon grooming remained in their old storage places. While she had looked, Sintara had writhed and wallowed in the sand, near burying herself in the hot particles. She had emerged gleaming like molten blue metal fresh from a furnace.

Time had rendered most of the grooming tools into rust and dust, but a few remained intact. There were small tools with metal bristles of something that rust had not eaten, and brushes like scrubbing brushes, but with the handles crafted of stone and the metal bristles set in clusters. There were metal rasps with the wooden handles long gone, glass flasks with a thickened residue of oil in the bottom, and a gleaming black case that held an assortment of black metal needles and other items she did not comprehend. Specialized tools for grooming dragons, she supposed, and wondered if one day all the niceties of that lost skill would be recalled.

With the smaller brushes, Thymara had performed the delicate grooming around Sintara’s eyes, nostrils and ear-holes, scrubbing away the remnants of messy meals. They had not spoken much, but Thymara had noticed many things about her dragon. Her claws, once blunted from walking and cracked by too much contact with water and mud, were now longer and harder and sharper. Her colours were stronger, her eyes brighter, and she had grown, not just putting on flesh, but gaining length in her tail. Her shape was changing as her muscles took on the duties of flight and forgot the long earthbound years of slogging through mud. This was no great lizard that she groomed, but a raptor, a flying predator that was both as lovely as a hummingbird and as deadly as a living blade. Thymara privately marvelled that she dared touch such a being. It was only when she noticed Sintara’s eyes whirling with pleasure that she realized the dragon was a party to all her thoughts and was relishing her wonder.

As she realized it, the dragon acknowledged it. ‘I awe you. Perhaps you cannot sing my praises with your voice, but reflected in you, I know I am the most magnificent of the dragons you have ever seen.’

‘Reflected in me?’

Dragons did not smile, but Thymara felt Sintara’s amusement. ‘Do you fish for compliments?’

‘I don’t understand,’ Thymara replied both honestly and resentfully. The dragon’s response had somehow implied she was vain. About what? About having the most beautiful of the queen dragons? One that alternated ignoring her with mocking or insulting her?

‘The most beautiful of all the dragons,’ Sintara amended her thought for her. ‘And the most brilliant and creative, as is clearly reflected in my having created the most dazzling Elderling.’

Thymara stared at her wordlessly. The brush hung forgotten in her hand.

Sintara gave a small snort of amusement. ‘From the beginning, I saw you had the most potential for development. It was why I chose you.’

‘I thought I chose you,’ Thymara faltered. Her heart was thundering. Her dragon thought she was beautiful! This soaring she felt, was it merely Sintara’s beguilement of her? She tried to ground herself but was certain this was not the dragon’s effortless glamorizing of her. This was what Sintara actually thought of her. Extraordinary!

‘Oh, doubtless you thought you chose me,’ Sintara went on with casual arrogance. ‘But I drew you to me. And as you see, I have employed a keen eye and a sure skill to make you the loveliest and most unusual of the Elderlings that now live. Just as I am the most glorious of the dragons.’

Thymara was silent, wishing she could deny the dragon’s self-aggrandizing, but knowing only a fool would claim to have lied in her thoughts. ‘Mercor gleams like liquid gold,’ she began, but Sintara snorted contemptuously.

‘Drakes! They have their colours and their muscles, but when it comes to beauty they have no patience for detail. Look at Sylve’s scaling some time and then compare it to your own. Plain as grass she is. Even in colouring their own scales, the other dragons lag far behind me.’ She shook herself and then came suddenly to her feet, erupting out of the hot sand and opening her wings in a single motion. ‘Look at these!’ she commanded proudly, flourishing her wings so that the wind from them sent particles of sand flying into Thymara’s face. ‘Where have you seen such intricacy, such brilliance of colour, such design?’

Thymara stared. Then wordlessly, she dragged her tunic up and over her head, to unfold her own wings. A glance over her shoulder told her that she had not imagined it. The differences were of scale only. She mirrored Sintara’s glory. Dragons did not laugh as humans did, but the sound Sintara made was definitely one of amusement.

The dragon settled herself onto the sand, leaving her wings open over the heated beds. ‘There. Next time you are moaning and snivelling that your dragon has no time for you, look over your shoulder and realize you already wear my colours. What more could any creature ask?’

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