A hard push with her paddle drove the nose of her boat onto the muddy shore. Rapskal shipped his paddle and jumped out to seize the painter and drag the boat farther ashore. With a groan, Thymara stored her own paddle and unfolded herself stiffly. The constant paddling had strengthened her and built her endurance, but she was still weary and aching at the end of each day.

Rapskal seemed almost unscathed by the extra long exertion. ‘Time to get a fire going,’ he announced cheerily. ‘And dry off. I hope the hunters got some meat. I’m awful sick of fish.’

‘Meat would be good,’ she agreed. ‘And a good fire.’ All around her, the other keepers were pulling their boats ashore and climbing wearily out.

‘Let’s hope,’ he replied and without a backward glance he scampered off into the darkness.

She sighed as she watched him go. His unfailing optimism and energy wearied her almost as much as they cheered her. With a sigh of annoyance, she busied herself with tidying Rapskal’s scattered gear from the bottom of the boat. She arranged her own pack so that her blanket and eating gear were on top and then followed him. A fire was being constructed in the lee of the big log. The log would provide fuel as well as trap and reflect the heat. Small flames were already starting to blossom. Rapskal excelled at setting fires and never seemed to tire of it. His fire-starting kit was always in a small pouch at his throat. The endless misting rain sizzled as it met the reaching flames.

‘Tired?’ Tats’ voice came from the darkness to her left.

‘Beyond tired,’ she replied. ‘Will this journey never be over? I’ve forgotten what it is like to be in one place for more than a night or two.’

‘It’s worse than that. Once we get wherever we’re going with the dragons, eventually we’ll have to make the trip back downriver.’

She was still for a moment. ‘You’d leave your dragon?’ she asked him quietly. She had still not made amends with Sintara, still ached when she thought of the dragon. She cared for the dragon as she always had, grooming her and finding extra food for her, but they spoke little now. It made the contrast sharper when she saw the fondness that some of the other keepers shared with their dragons. Tats and Fente were close. Or she had thought they were.

He put his hands on her shoulders and squeezed gently. ‘I don’t know. It depends, I suppose. Sometimes she seems to need me, to even be fond of me. Other times, well—’

Even as she shrugged away from his hands, her body registered how good it felt to have his warm touch on her sore muscles. He stepped back from her, acknowledging her rebuke. Like a rising flood of warm water, the image of Greft and Jerd’s tangled bodies washed through her. For a blink of time, she thought of turning to face him, dared to imagine running her hands down his warm, bare back. But the next image that jolted her was the thought of his hands sliding over her scaled skin. Like petting a warm lizard, she mocked herself, and folded her lips tightly to keep from crying out at the unfairness of it. Greft and Jerd might be able to indulge in the forbidden, but perhaps it was only because each had found a fellow outcast as a partner. Neither would be repelled by how the Rain Wilds had touched the other. That would not be the case with someone like Tats. He came from the Tattooed folk; he had not been born here. His skin was as smooth as a Bingtown girl’s, unmarked by wattles or scaling. Unlike her own.

‘A long day,’ Tats said into her silence.

His tentative tone wondered if he had angered her by taking a liberty. She swallowed her fury at fate and evened her voice. ‘A long day, and I’m still sore from being “rescued” by Mercor. I’ll he glad of a warm fire and a bit of hot food tonight’

As if in answer, the fire suddenly climbed up the heaped driftwood. The glowing light outlined her friends gathering around the fire. Slight Sylve was there, standing next to narrow Harrikin. They were laughing, for long-limbed Warken was doing a frenzied dance to shake a shower of sparks from his wild hair and worn shirt.

Boxter and Kase were twin blocks of darkness, the cousins together as always. Lecter stalked past them, the spines on his neck and back clearly limned against the fire’s light. He’d had to cut the neck of his shirt to allow for their growth. That sight somehow reassured her. Those are my friends, she thought, and smiled. They were just as marked as she was. Then she caught a glimpse of Jerd’s seated profile. She was perched on a piece of driftwood and Greft stood behind her, powerful and protective. As Thymara watched, Jerd leaned back so that the top of her head touched his thigh as she spoke up to him. Greft bent to answer her and for an instant they formed a closed shape, the two of them becoming a single entity that shut out the rest of the world.

Jealousy cut her. It was not that she wanted Greft, merely that she wanted what they had simply taken for themselves. Jerd laughed aloud and Greft’s shoulders moved in a way that echoed her amusement. The others either ignored or accepted their closeness. Was she the only one who still felt a twinge of outrage and unease at what they were proclaiming?

Without thinking about it, she was following Tats towards the fire. ‘What do you make of Jerd and Greft?’ she asked him and then was shocked she had spoken the words aloud. She regretted the question instantly, for when Tats turned his head to glance back at her, he was plainly surprised by her query.

‘Jerd and Greft?’ he said.

‘They’re sleeping together. Mating.’ She heard the bluntness of her own words, the anger behind them. ‘She’s with Greft every chance she gets.’

‘For now,’ Tats dismissed her comment and seemed to be replying to something else as he said dismissively, ‘Jerd will go with anyone. Greft will discover that soon enough. Or perhaps he knows and doesn’t care. I could well imagine him taking what he could get, while he could get it, and planning to have something better later.’ The meaningful look he gave her as he added those last words confused her and made her uncomfortable. Her thoughts hopped like a flea through his words. What was he saying? She tried to lighten the tone of the conversation. ‘Jerd will go with anyone? Even you?’ She started to laugh as she teased her old friend, but the smile froze on her lips as Tats hunched his shoulders and turned slightly away from her.

‘Me? Perhaps,’ he said roughly. ‘Is that so unthinkable?’

She suddenly recalled the night that Greft’s words had driven Tats from the fire, and how Jerd had risen and left shortly after that. And the next day, the two had shared a boat, and for several days after that… Understanding suddenly stilled her. Tats spreading his blankets near Jerd’s, sitting by her during the evening meals. How could she not have seen what it meant? Jealousy flared in her but before its heat could scorch her heart, ice chilled and broke it. What a fool she was! Of course that would be how it was, probably from the very first night they’d left Trehaug. Jerd, Greft, Tats, all of them had discarded the rules. Only stiff, stupid Thymara had assumed they still applied.

‘Me, too!’ Rapskal announced, materializing from the dark to make an unwelcome addition to their conversation.

‘You too what?’ Tats asked him unwillingly.

Rapskal looked at him as if he were stupid. ‘Me with Jerd. Before you, I was. Though she didn’t like much how I did it. She said it wasn’t funny and when I laughed at how messy it was, she said that only proved I was a boy and not a man. ‘Never with you again!’ she told me after that one time. ‘I don’t care,’ I told her. And I don’t. Why do that with someone who takes it so seriously? I think it would be more fun with someone like you, Thymara. You can take a joke. I mean, look at us. We get along. You never take offence just because a fellow has a sense of humour.’