But he’d have to set him up for it. And that would mean trying to convince him that he’d had a change of heart. He wondered if he could make him believe that he’d lost interest in Alise as well. If Jess didn’t see her as a weapon he could use against Leftrin, he might stop haunting her. After that, it would be a matter of waiting for the right opportunity.

Tarman nudged him. ‘What?’ he demanded of his ship, and stood. A quick scan around betrayed no perceptible danger. Despite his excuse to Alise, this part of the river was a fairly easy stretch. It was edged with reed beds that ventured out into the channel, so that the barge moved through them. The fishing would be good, and he suspected that the dragons would feed fairly well along today’s path.

Then he saw a shivering in the trees behind the reed banks. Every tree shook, and a few dropped yellowed leaves and small twigs. An instant later, the reed bank rippled like a wave, a wave that moved out into the river, trembling water and grasses. The motion slapped the barge’s hull and then moved past it, almost vanishing in the deeper water.

‘Quake!’ Swarge raised the cry from the stern.

‘Quake!’ Big Eider bellowed the warning to the keepers in their small boats.

‘So it is!’ Leftrin shouted back. ‘Move Tarman away from the banks as much as you can, but don’t lose our grip on the bottom. ‘Ware, now!’

‘Ware!’ his polemen cried him back.

As Tarman edged away from the bank, Leftrin watched another rippling move the trees. On the shore, small debris of leaves, twigs and old birds’ nests showered down. An instant later, rank after rank of reeds bowed to the river, followed by a wavelet that rocked the boat. Leftrin scowled but kept his eyes on the trees. Quakes were frequent in the Rain Wilds and for the most part, little tremors were ignored by everyone. Larger ones endangered not only the underground workers in the buried Elderling cities, but could also bring down old or rotten trees. Even if a tree didn’t hit the barge directly, he’d heard of falling trees that swamped boats. In his grandfather’s time, supposedly a tree had fallen that was so large it had actually stopped all traffic on the river and had taken workers nearly six months to clear away. Leftrin was a bit sceptical about the full truth of that tale, but every legend had a grain of truth. Doubtless a very big tree had come down somewhere to spark that one.

‘What’s going on?’ Alise sounded apprehensive. She’d heard the shouts and come out on the deck.

He answered without looking at her. ‘We’ve had a quake, and a pretty good one. No problem for us right now, and it looks like it didn’t do much more than give the trees a good shake. None fell. Unless we get a second bigger shake, we’ll be just fine.’

To her credit, Alise simply nodded. Quakes were common all along the Cursed Shores. No Bingtown resident would be surprised by one, but he doubted she’d ever experienced one on the water, nor had to worry about a big tree coming down. And it came to him that the next warning would probably be new to her as well. ‘Sometimes a quake will wake up the acid in the river. But it doesn’t happen right away. The theory is that it does something way upriver, releases the white somehow. In a couple or three days, we may suddenly find the river is running white again. Or it may not. A really bad quake may warn of a dirty rain to follow.’

She realized the danger instantly. ‘If the river runs acid, what will the dragons do? And can the small boats the keepers use withstand it?’

He took a deep breath and exhaled it through his nose. ‘Well, an acid run is always a danger on the river. The small boats could probably stand up to it for a time, but for safety’s sake, if the acid was strong, we’d bring the small boats on deck, stack them, and have the keepers ride with us.’

‘And the dragons?’

He shook his head. ‘From what I’ve seen, they’ve got tough hides. Some of the animals, fish and birds in the Wilds can deal with the acid. Some creatures avoid the river when it runs white; others don’t seem to notice the difference. If the river runs white, a lot will depend on how white it is, and how long the run lasts. If it’s only a day or so, my guess is that the dragons will be able to take it. Much longer than that, and I’d be concerned. But maybe we’ll be lucky and find ourselves near a fairly solid bank where the dragons could haul out and wait for the worst to pass.’

‘What if there isn’t a bank?’ Alise asked in a low voice.

‘You know the answer to that,’ Leftrin replied. So far in their journey, that had only happened once. One night, evening had come with no resting place in sight. There had been only marshlands as far as the eye could see, nowhere for the dragons to get out of the water. Despite their grumbling, the dragons had had to stand overnight in the water, while the keepers had taken refuge on Tarman’s deck. The dragons hadn’t enjoyed the experience, but they had survived. But the water had been mild then, and the weather kind. ‘They’d have to endure it,’ Leftrin said, and neither one spoke of how the acid might eat at injuries and tender tissue.

After a few moments of silence, Leftrin added, ‘That’s always been a danger on this journey, Alise. The most obvious danger, actually, and one we’ve always had to live with. The first “settlers” in the Rain Wild were actually abandoned here; no one in their right mind would come here of their own accord.’

‘I know my history,’ Alise interrupted a bit brusquely, but then added with a small smile, ‘And I definitely came here of my own accord.’

‘Well, it’s so that Bingtown’s history is the Rain Wilds’ history. But I think we live it here a bit more than you folks do.’ He leaned on the railing, feeling Tarman sturdy beneath him. He glanced up and down the current of his world. ‘Strangeness flows with the water in this river, and if affects us all, one way or another. Trehaug might not be the easiest place in the world to live, and Cassarick is no better. But without those cities, Bingtown wouldn’t have Elderling magic to sell. So, no Rain Wild, no Bingtown is how I see it. But what I’m trying to say is that generation after generation, decade after decade, young explorers have set out vowing they’re going to find a better place to settle. Some don’t come back. And those that do report the same thing. Nothing but an immense wide valley, with lots of trees and lots of wet ground. And the deeper you go into the forest, the stranger it gets. All the expeditions that have gone up this river have come back saying that they either ran out of navigable waterway, or that the river just flattened out, wider and wider, until it seemed there were no real banks to it anywhere.’

‘But they just didn’t go far enough, did they? I’ve seen enough references to Kelsingra to know that the city existed. And somewhere, it still does.’

‘The sad truth is that it could be under our hull right now, and we’d never know. Or it could be half a day’s journey away from us, back there in the trees, cloaked in moss and mud. Or it could have been up one of the tributaries we’ve passed. Two other Elderling cities either sank or were buried. No one is sure just exactly what befell them, but we know they’re underground now. The same thing could have happened to Kelsingra. Probably did happen. We know that something big and bad happened here a long time ago. It ended the Elderlings and nearly ended the dragons. It changed everything. All we’re really doing right now is following the dragons up the most navigable waterway, and hoping we come to something.’

He glanced at her, saw her face pale under her freckles and her set mouth. He tried to speak more gently. ‘It only makes sense, Alise. If Kelsingra had survived, wouldn’t the Elderlings have lived? And if the Elderlings had survived, wouldn’t they have kept dragons alive somehow? In all the tapestries, they’re always together.’