She called her thoughts back to the moment at hand. Her four remaining sheets of good paper rested on her battered lap-desk. ‘You haven’t really told me anything, Rapskal.’

He took a breath that lifted his narrow shoulders. He smiled at her, his white teeth showing strangely in his red-scaled face. ‘Well. Here’s how it was. I was talking to Tats and he was mad at me for telling Thymara that I’d like to do to her what Jerd had taught me to do with her why aren’t you writing?’

‘Because, well, that’s not the important part,’ Alise replied and heard her Bingtown primness come to the fore as a blush heated her face.

‘Well, after that, then. Then that wave hit. And I got washed away by it.’

‘Yes.’

‘And then, I was trying to swim and I felt that Heeby was near, so I shouted for her, and she came to me. And we swam together for a while. Then a really big tangle of wood floated by. Maybe it had been part of the bonfire, I don’t know. But it hit us and we sort of got tangled in it. Well, I didn’t. I climbed up on top, but Heeby got tangled. She wasn’t drowning but she couldn’t break free. So I told her, “Don’t fight it, let’s just ride it out.” And we did. All that night and the next morning we found we were way out in the middle of the river and could hardly see the shores. I didn’t think we could swim to the shore so I thought, well, just stay with the floating wood tangle until we can see the shore. And that was a bad time for both of us, because she was stuck and we just got pushed on and on by the river. No food or water for either of us.’

‘How long was that?’

‘Don’t remember. More than two days, anyway.’ His claws were black. He scratched under his chin, gave a happy wriggle, and then settled again. ‘By and by, anyway, the river washed us up on the place where there was a big low meadow. Must have been on the other side of the river from the side we kept to when we were following the Tarman, because it didn’t look to me like anywhere we had passed. And the river was on the wrong side of us, if you get what I mean. Well, there I could help Heeby get untangled and we went ashore. And we didn’t have much but I still had my fire-starting stuff, because I always keep it in this pouch. See?’

‘I see,’ she replied. Her pen flew but she glanced up briefly as he held up the pouch he wore on a string around his neck.

‘So I built a fire to warm up my dragon, and waited for someone to see it and find us. But no one did. But there was pretty good hunting in the meadow place. There were these animals, maybe goats, maybe sheep I think, from what my dad used to tell me. They weren’t deer or riverpig, anyway. They weren’t very fast and at first they weren’t very scared of us. By the second or third day, they started to be scared because they figured out that Heeby liked to kill them and eat them. So we were eating those, and then we found this place back near some trees. It had a get-warm place for Heeby that she knew how to make work. And a stone building, mostly fallen down but two rooms of it had good roofs, so that was plenty big enough for us. And Heeby hunted a lot and ate a lot, and so did I. And sometimes we slept on the get-warm place and sometimes we slept in the old building. Heeby started to grow and get brighter colours and her wings were growing, and her tail, and even her teeth! And we kept doing her flying lessons, you know what I mean. You used to see us doing them, right?’

‘Yes. I used to see you trying to get her to fly.’

‘Yes. Well, her wings just got bigger and stronger and one day she flew, just a little bit. And the next day, she could fly more, and then more. But she couldn’t fly for a long time then, not for a whole day. But she could fly long enough that it got so she could hunt really good. And that girl of mine, all she wanted to do was hunt and eat and sleep on the get-warm place and hunt and sleep some more and she just kept getting bigger and stronger all the time.’

He shook his head, smiling indulgently. Then he stood up again and looked longingly down at the riverbank. Some of the keepers and their dragons were splashing one another and shouting and laughing. Tats had Fente on the bank and seemed to be scratching her with sand. The dragon looked stupefied with pleasure. Alise looked at her wet letters. She sprinkled sand over her page to dry the ink, waited a breath and shook it clean. She set out a fresh page. ‘And then?’

He paced a turn, restless as a tethered dog. ‘Oh, you know. Ate more, slept more, and got even bigger. We both got lonely and Heeby said one day, “So, let’s go to Kelsingra.” And I said, “Can you find it?” and she said she thought she could. And I said, “Can you fly that far?” and she said she thought she could, as long as she could find places to land and rest at night. And no landing in the river because she knows she can’t fly up from water, and after being stuck in the tangle of wood and in water for days, she hates it now. So I said, “Well, then, let’s go,” and we did. And we found Kelsingra, but no one was here. And I was really sad thinking you all must be dead, but she said, “No, I can feel some of the dragons but they don’t or can’t hear me.” So we just started flying around every day, looking and looking and calling and calling. And then one day we heard dragons trumpeting and it sounded like a big fight starting. So we went to see, and found out it was just Sintara having a fuss. But we found you all up in that slough and told you to come here and here we are.’

He was silent until her pen stopped moving. Then he asked with a trace of impatience, ‘So. It’s done now, right? Posterity will know.’

‘It will indeed, Rapskal. And your name and Heeby’s name will be remembered, generation after generation after generation.’

That seemed, finally, to give him pause. He looked at her and smiled. ‘Good, then. That’s nice. Heeby will like that. She wasn’t sure about her name at first. And maybe I should have thought of something longer and grander, but I’d never named a dragon before.’ He lifted one shoulder in a shrug. ‘She got used to it. She likes her name, now.’

‘Well, she will be remembered by many, many people as the dragon that gave Kelsingra and its history back to us.’ Alise once more stared at the gleaming city on the other side of the swiftly-flowing river, it’s a torment to see it and not be able to get over there. I cannot wait until the day I can walk those streets and enter those buildings and find what is left to us of them. I dare to hope for their city records, for scrolls and perhaps even a library’

‘Not much there, really.’ Rapskal dismissed her dreams with a shrug. ‘Most of the wood is gone rotten. I didn’t see any scrolls or books in the places where I slept. Heeby and I walked around over there for a couple of days. Just an empty city.’

‘You’ve been over there!’ Why had it never occurred to her before? He and his dragon would not be inconvenienced by a dangerous current. Of course they had gone first to the main part of the ancient Elderling city. ‘Rapskal, wait, come back. Sit down. I need to know what you’ve seen.’

He turned and gave an impatient wriggle that made him a boy again. ‘Please, Alise, ma’am, not now! Later today, after Heeby hunts and kills and eats and sleeps, when she wakes up, I’ll ask her to take you over there. Then you can see it for yourself and write it down and draw it or whatever. But it’s been so long since I had time with my friends, and I’ve been lonely.’

‘What?’

‘I’ve been by myself for so long! I really missed having people to talk to and’

‘No. No, not that! Heeby would take me across to Kelsingra? She would fly me there?’

He cocked his head at her. ‘Well, yes. She doesn’t swim that good, you know, so she’d have to fly you there. She doesn’t like to swim at all any more. Doesn’t even like to wade out in the water since we got stuck in the river like that.’