He nodded slowly, then asked her, ‘Are you alone?’

She shrugged and wondered why his question made her uncomfortable. ‘Yes. Everyone else was asleep.’

‘I wasn’t.’

‘Well, you were talking to Boxter. And I like to hunt and forage alone. I always have.’ She took another step towards him, but he made no sign of moving to allow her to pass him on the branch. It was wide enough that he could easily have moved to one side. Instead, he remained perched where he was, looking up at her. She didn’t know Nortel well; she’d never realized his eyes were green. He was not as scaled as most of the other boys, and what he did have, around his eyes, was very fine. When he blinked, his lashes caught the light and sparked silver at her.

After a long moment, he said, ‘I’m sorry about Rapskal. I know you two were close.’

She looked away from him. She was trying not to think of Rapskal and Heeby and whether they had died quickly or struggled for a long time in the water. ‘I’ll miss him,’ she said. Her voice went thick and tight on the words. ‘But today is today, and I need to see what food I can find. May I get past you, please?’

‘Oh. Of course.’ Instead of just sliding to one side, he stood up. He was taller than she was. He turned sideways on the branch and motioned that she should edge past him. She hesitated. Was there a challenge in how he stood there or was she imagining it?

She decided she was being silly. She edged past him, sliding her feet and facing him as she did so. She was halfway past him when he shifted slightly. She dug her toenails into the bark of the branch and hissed in alarm. He immediately caught her by the arms and held her facing him. His grip on her arms was firm and she was closer to him than she wanted to be. ‘I wouldn’t let you fall,’ he promised her, his face solemn. His green eyes bored down into hers.

‘I wasn’t about to fall. Let go.’

He didn’t. They were frozen in a tableau, looking at one another. A struggle would almost certainly mean that one or both of them would fall. The smile on his face was warm, the look in his eyes inviting.

‘I’m getting angry. Let go now.’

The warmth faded from his eyes and he granted her request. But he slid his hand down her arm before he lifted it away. She hopped past him, resisting the urge to give him a slight shove as she did so.

‘I didn’t mean to make you angry,’ he said. ‘It’s just… well, Rapskal is gone. And I know you’re alone now. So am I.’

‘I’ve always been alone,’ she told him furiously and then strode off along the branch. She wasn’t fleeing she reminded herself, only leaving him behind. When she reached the next trunk, she went up it more quickly than a lizard and refused to look back to see if he was watching her climb. Instead, she concentrated on climbing higher, heading for the upper reaches of the canopy where more sunlight increased the chances of finding fruit.

Fortune favoured her. She found a bread leaf vine parasitizing a handprint tree. The fat yellow leaves didn’t offer much flavour, but they were filling and crisp with moisture as well. For a time, she perched and ate her fill, then tore several trailing strings of leaves from it. She wound the vines into a loose wreath and put them around her neck hanging down her back.

She started back down, and on the way saw a sour pear tree only a few trunks away. She crossed to it. The fruit was past its prime and slightly wrinkly, but she doubted her friends would be fussy. With no other way to carry it, she filled the front of her shirt and then went more slowly, trying to avoid crushing the food she carried. When she reached the tree by the river’s edge and climbed down to the flotsam raft, she was surprised to find that many of the keepers were still sleeping. Tats was awake; he and Greft were trying to kindle a small fire at the root end of one of the big snags. A thin tendril of smoke wound up into the morning air. As she approached, she saw Sylve and Harrikin crouched at the edge of the packed driftwood. She watched as Sylve reached out with a long stick and then dragged something closer. It wasn’t until she was near that she realized they were pulling dead fish from the river. Harrikin was cleaning them, sticking a claw in each belly, slitting it open and scooping out the guts before adding it to the row of fish beside him.

‘Where are the dragons?’ she called anxiously to them.

Sylve turned to her and gave her a weary smile. ‘There you are! I thought I’d dreamed you telling me you were going hunting, but then you were gone when I woke all the way. The acid run killed a lot of fish and other creatures. The dragons have moved upriver. They’ve discovered an eddy full of carrion and are eating their fill. I’m glad there’s something for them. They’re tired from treading water and so much swimming, but at least they won’t be hungry after this. Even Mercor was beginning to be bad-tempered, and I was afraid a couple of the bigger males were going to fight this morning.’

‘Did Sintara go with them?’

‘They all went, each more jealous than the next, to be sure of getting a fair share. What did you bring?’

‘Bread leaf and sour pear. My shirt is full of sour pear. I couldn’t think of any other way to carry them.’

Sylve laughed. ‘We’ll be glad to have them, no matter how you got them here. Greft and Tats are trying to get enough of a fire going that we can cook the fish. If it doesn’t work, I suppose raw will have to do.’

‘Better than nothing, certainly’

Harrikin had been quiet through their conversation. He was never much of a talker. The first time she had seen him, he had reminded her of a lizard. He was long and slender, and much older than Sylve, but she seemed very comfortable with him. Thymara had not realized that he, too, had claws, until she watched him using them. He looked up from his task, caught her eyes on his hands, and nodded an acknowledgment to her.

A little silence fell over the group. Unanswered questions were answered by it. No one spoke of Rapskal, and in the distance, she heard Alum’s dragon give a long, anxious cry. Arbuc still called for his missing keeper. Warken’s red dragon Baliper held his mourning silence. Nothing had changed. The remaining keepers were still marooned on a raft of floating debris. Nothing had changed. Thymara wondered in passing what would become of them if their dragons abandoned them here. Would they? Did the dragons need them any longer? What if they decided to travel on without them?

She looked up to see Tats coming towards them and wondered if she looked as bad as he did. His skin was scalded red from the river water, and his hair stuck up in tufts. The water had attacked his clothing as well, mottling the already-worn shirt and trousers. He looked haggard, but still managed to put on a smile for her. ‘What are you wearing?’ he asked her.

‘Our breakfast. Bread leaf and sour pear. Looks like you have a fire going for the fish.’

He glanced back to the little blaze that Greft tended. Jerd had come from somewhere to join him. She leaned against him quietly as he broke dry bits of root from the end of the snag and fed it to the small fire he’d kindled in the main nest of roots. ‘It wasn’t easy to get it going. And the fear is that if we succeed too well, it may spread to the rest of the debris pack and send us fleeing again. We don’t have much security here, but at least we’re still afloat.’

‘And the water is going down. But if we must, we could take to the trees. Here. Hold your shirt out.’

Tats lifted the front of his shirt to form a sling, and Thymara reached down her own shirt front to extract the sour pears she had carried inside her shirt against her belly. The wrinkled fruit were no relation to true pears but she had heard that the flavour was similar. When she had emptied her shirt into his, she followed him back to Greft’s fire. She feared there would be awkwardness when she got there, comments or mockery, but Jerd only turned away from her while Greft said simply, ‘Thanks. Any chance of more?’