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, T 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.'