‘Of course she serves me. Or at least she has the potential to do so, if she rises to have the spirit of a queen. Of what use to me is a servant who grovels to other humans? How can she demand the best for me if she is always deferring to them? At one time, Alise, I thought that you, too, might serve me in such a way. But of late, you disappoint me even more severely than Thymara. And I do not see you trying to change. Perhaps you are too old and incapable of it.’

Hurt could be expressed as silence. Thymara suddenly knew that, for she heard Alise’s pain and it drove her out of the darkness. Dropping all pretence that she had not overheard their conversation, she sprang to the older woman’s defence. ‘I do not know why either one of us would wish to serve such an arrogant, ungrateful creature as you!’ she exclaimed as she stepped between them.

‘Ah. Good evening, little sneak. Did you enjoy your time lurking in darkness, listening to us?’ Aggression puffed out the dragon’s chest, and she seemed almost luminous in her anger. A silvery blue glow surrounded her, setting off the growing rows of fringe on her neck. The dragon’s light struck coppery ripples from the gown Alise wore. It was a breathtakingly beautiful sight, the gleaming copper woman with shining red hair against the silver and blue of the dragon. They were like a scene out of an old tale or a tapestry, and if Thymara had not been so angry with the dragon, her beauty would have captured her. Sintara sensed her wonder and began to preen herself, lifting her wings and shaking them out so that their glow was unmistakable. They were opalescent and larger than Thymara recalled them.

‘I grow stronger and more beautiful each day,’ the dragon echoed her thought effortlessly. ‘Those who have said I will never fly will one day eat their words. Only Tintaglia can rival me for beauty and power, and a day will come when that will not be so. I am not ashamed to say so of myself. I know what I am. So why should I tolerate the company of a timid little prey beast, who bleats and squeaks her pity for herself, who will not even challenge the male who presents himself.’

‘Challenge the male’ Alise’s icy voice melted and dribbled away in confusion.

‘Of course.’ The dragon derided her lack of comprehension. ‘He has presented himself. He is strong enough and in good health. He follows you, sniffing after your scent. He flatters you and acknowledges your cleverness. You cannot hide from me that you are aware of his desire for you and that you find him attractive. But before you can take him, you should present to him a challenge. For you, there can be no mating flight, no battle in the air as he struggles to mount you and you evade him and test his skills in flight. But there are other ways of old that Elderling males once proved themselves. Set him a challenge.’

‘I am not an Elderling,’ Alise declared. Silently Thymara remarked that she did not challenge any of Sintara’s other comments. So who was the suitor that Sintara deemed worthy of Alise? Sedric, she knew abruptly. The beautiful Bingtown man that had seemed to be at Alise’s beck and call. Was Alise the reason he had come ashore tonight? Did he hope for a tryst with her? A voyeuristic thrill coursed through Thymara at that thought, shocking her. What was the matter with her? Sternly she refused to imagine them locked and rocking belly to belly as Jerd and Greft had been.

‘And I am a married woman.’ Alise’s second assertion seemed, not a statement of fact, but an admission of doom.

‘Why do you bind yourself to a mate you do not desire?’ the dragon asked. Her confusion seemed genuine. ‘Why do you obey a rule that only frustrates you? What do you gain from it?’

‘I keep my word,’ Alise replied heavily. ‘And my honour. We entered into a bargain, Hest and I. In good faith we spoke promises to keep to one another and have no other. I wish I had not. Truly, I had no idea what I was giving up. For scrolls and a comfortable home and good food on the table, I bargained away myself. It was a stupid bargain, but one we have both kept in good faith. So, when all this is done, I will leave Leftrin and my dragons and my days of being alive. I will go home and do my best to conceive an heir for my husband. It is what I promised to do. And if you think me a squeaking and bleating prey beast in the clutches of a predator, well, perhaps I am. But perhaps it takes a different kind of strength to keep my word when every bone in my body cries out for me to break it.’

Sintara snorted disdainfully. ‘You do not believe he has kept his promises.’

‘I have no proof that he has broken them.’

‘No. You are the only proof that he has broken something.

You are broken.’ The dragon’s pronouncement was delivered heartlessly.

‘Perhaps. But I have kept my word and my honour intact.’ Alise’s voice had grown more and more ragged as she spoke. As she affirmed her honour, that she would keep her word, she bowed her face into her hands. For a time, she choked in silence. Then thick, painful gasps of mourning escaped her. Thymara stepped forward and hesitantly patted Alise’s shoulder. She had never attempted to console anyone before. ‘I understand,’ she said in a quiet voice. ‘You are choosing the only honourable path. But it is hard for you. And even harder when people think you are a fool for keeping your word.’

Alise lifted a tear-stained face. Impulsively, Thymara put her arms around her. ‘Thank you,’ the older woman said brokenly. ‘For not thinking me stupid.’

The rain was coming down again, harder this time. Leftrin pulled his knitted cap down over his ears and squinted through the darkness and the downpour. He’d had a long day, and all he really wanted to do was settle down at his galley table with some hot tea, a bowl of chowder and a red-headed woman who smiled at his jokes, and said ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ to his crew’s efforts at courtesy. Little enough, he thought to himself, for a man to ask out of life. As he’d clambered down to the shore and stalked off across the muddy flat, Tarman’s painted gaze had followed him sympathetically. The ship knew his errand, and knew how much he disliked it.

It was just like that bastard Jess to demand he meet him out here in the rain and dark. They’d been exchanging silence and glares for several days now. Leftrin had been successfully avoiding conversation with the man by refusing to be alone with him. But tonight, just as he’d been getting ready to settle in by the warm galley stove, he’d found a note in the bottom of his coffee mug.

He’d done his best to slip away unobtrusively from his gathered crew. No one seemed to mark his departure. He moved quietly through the dark, veering away from the keepers and their bonfire. A burst of wind carried their laughter and the smell of cooking fish toward him as it whipped the flames higher. He’d no wish for anyone to see him ashore tonight.

Wind and the spattering rain and the dark all cloaked him as he approached the silver dragon. That, he took it, was the cryptic location for his meeting with Jess. ‘Meet me by silver or the secret is out.’ That was all the note had said, but it was a threat he could not ignore. The dragon had his front feet braced on something and was tearing chunks of meat loose from it. He knew a wild moment of hope that it was eating Jess. Another two steps and he could see that it had been something with four legs. The hunter had brought the dragon a bribe to keep him occupied while they talked. And it had worked. He watched the silver tear a leg loose from the carcass. The silver’s condition had improved since he had first seen the creature, but he was still smaller and less healthy than the other dragons. His tail had healed but he seemed to acquire parasites much more often than the other dragons. The dragon became aware of Leftrin and shifted to watch him as he chewed on the hoofed leg.