T didn't realize the dragons had human tenders. I mean, I knew that they had hunters helping provide for them, but I didn't realize that—'

'They don't. Or they didn't.' Leftrin had a knack for interrupting her in a way that was friendly rather than rude. 'They're all newcomers. Those are the keepers you heard about, the ones that are going to move the dragons upriver. They can't have been here much longer than a day, at most two.'

'But some of them are only children!' Alise protested. It was not her concern for them that sharpened her voice. It was, she thought to herself, simple jealousy. There they were, mere youngsters, doing exactly what she had imagined herself doing. Somehow, she had visualized herself as being the first to befriend a dragon, to touch it with kindness and win its confidence. The way Althea and Brashen had described the dragons, she had thought they would be like reptilian half-wits, awaiting, perhaps, her understanding and patience to unlock their innate intelligence. What she saw on the beach was another broken pane in the dream window; she was not to be the dragons' saviour, the only one who understood them.

Leftrin shrugged a heavy shoulder to her comment, mistaking it for concern. 'Youngsters don't get to be children long in the Rain Wilds, and especially not children like those. Look at them. It's a wonder their parents kept them. You can't tell me those youngsters are all late-changers. You don't get claws unless you were born with them. And that young man there? I'll wager he was born with scales on his head and has never had a bit of hair anywhere on his body. No, they're all mistakes, the lot of them. And that's why they were chosen.'

His blunt and cold appraisal of the dragons' attendants shocked Alise into silence.

'And are you and the Tarman a mistake? Is that why you were chosen for the expedition?' Sedric's voice was as acidic as the river.

But if Leftrin noticed the intended unpleasantness in his tone, he didn't react to it. 'No, me and Tarman are hired. And the contract's a good one, tight as a contract can be written. And the terms are good, for Tarman and me.' Here he tipped Alise a broad wink, and she almost blushed. He spoke on as if Sedric could not have noticed it. 'Not just because no one else would take it, but because the Rain Wilds Council knows that no one else can do this job. Tarman and I have been farther up the river than any other large vessel. There may be a few who have gone farther, game scouts in canoes and such. But you can't do what the Council wants done from a canoe.'

'And what the Council wants done is the dragons driven away from Cassarick.'

'Well, that's putting it a bit harshly, Sedric. But look for yourself. They're obviously not in a good place. They're not healthy, there's no game they can hunt for themselves, and they're killing the trees all around the beach.'

'And they're impeding a profitable excavation of the old city'

'Yes, that's true also,' Leftrin replied implacably.

Alise gave Sedric a sideways look. His last little remark had been barbed. He was still upset, and she supposed he had every right to be. Her session at the Traders' Hall in Cassarick had gone on much longer than she had expected. Thrashing out the details of Leftrin's contract with the committee had taken most of those hours. Malta the Elderling had remained for the long discussion, but with every passing hour, she looked more like a weary and pregnant woman and less like an elegant and powerful Elderling. Alise had observed her unobtrusively but avariciously.

When Alise had first encountered the idea that humans became Elderlings, it had cracked her sense of reality. Elderlings had been the stuff of legend for her when she was a girl. Shadowy, powerful creatures at the edge of tales and myths; those were the Elderlings. Legends spoke of their elegance and beauty, of power sometimes wielded with wisdom and sometimes with casual cruelty. When the original Rain Wild settlers had discovered traces of ancient settlements and then connected those ruins to the near-mythical Elderlings, many had been sceptical. Over the years it had become accepted that they had been real and that perhaps the magical and arcane treasures unearthed in the Rain Wilds were the last remaining traces of their passage on this world. They had been a glorious magical race and now they were vanished forever.

No one had connected the unfortunate and sometimes grotesque disfigurements of the Rain Wild settlers with the ethereal beauty of the Elderings depicted in scrolls, tapestries and legends. Scaled skin and glowing eyes were not always lovely to look upon, and in the cases of the Rain Wilds offspring afflicted with them, their life-spans were greatly shortened, not the near immortals that legend decreed the Elderlings were. Vultures and peacocks might both have feathers and beaks, but one did not confuse the two creatures. Yet Malta and Selden Vestrit of Bingtown and Reyn Khuprus of the Rain Wilds had changed, just as those touched by the Rain Wilds changed, not toward the monstrous but toward the fantastic. Dragon-touched, some now called them to distinguish them from the others. Somehow, she suspected, their being present during the emergence of Tintaglia from her case and spending so much time with her afterward had caused their metamorphoses to proceed in a different pattern.

Watching Malta Khuprus had given her much to think about during the long and tedious hours of Leftrin's haggling. He had not seemed to find the delay boring, but had settled into his deal-making with the enthusiasm of a pit-dog trying to pull down a bull. While he discussed who would pay for food and how much the Tarman could carry and if the small boats for the keepers would be his responsibility and who would pay if a dragon did any damage to his vessel and a hundred other variables, Alise covertly studied the Elderling woman and wondered. It was too obvious to ignore that the physical changes a human underwent were that their body acquired some of the characteristics of a dragon. Or a reptile, she judiciously added. The scales, the unusual growths, Malta's crest on her brow all spoke of some connection to the dragons.

But other parts of the puzzle did not fit. The strange elongation of her bones, for instance.

If the Elder lings had known exactly what precipitated the changes that took them from human to Elderling, they had not written it down, at least not in any scrolls that Alise had ever seen. Then she wondered if Elderlings had ever been a completely separate race from humans. Had humans always changed to become Elderlings, or had Elderlings existed separately but perhaps interbred with humanity? Alise had become so enmeshed in her pondering that when Leftrin abruptly announced, 'Well, it's all settled then. I'll depart as soon as you've managed to ferry the supplies down to the dock,' she felt jolted out of a dream. She looked around her to see the Council members rising from their chairs and coming to shake Leftrin's hand. A document, evidently written as they settled each term, and signed by all, was being sanded to set and dry the ink. Malta, looking frailer than ever, had signed in her turn and was now gazing at Alise. The Bingtown woman gathered all her courage and went to present herself.

Yet before she reached Malta, the woman had gracefully but with weariness come to meet her. She took both of Alise's hands in hers and said, T truly don't know how to thank you. I wish that I myself could be going. Not that I have any great fondness for dragons; they are difficult to deal with, being nearly as stubborn and self-justified as humans.'

Alise was astonished. She had expected the Elderling to declare her undying devotion to dragons and to beg Alise to do all she could to protect them. Instead, she continued, 'Don't trust them. Don't think of them as especially noble or of a higher morality than humans. They aren't. They're just like us, except they are larger and stronger, with potent memories of always having their own way. So, be careful. And whatever you learn of them, whether you find Kelsingra or not, you must record and bring back to us. Because sooner or later, humanity is going to have to co-exist with a substantial population of dragons. We have forgotten all we ever knew about dealing with dragons. But they have forgotten nothing about humans.'