Knowing it was ridiculous, a mercy performed too late, she gathered his unwashed garments and carefully folded them, setting some aside to launder. She shook out his bedding and remade his pallet. A promise to herself, a foolish promise that he would return and be relieved to find a tidy room waiting for him. She took up the bundle he had been using for a pillow and shook it to fluff it.

As she did so, something fell to the floor. She stooped in the darkness and groped until her fingers found a fine chain. She lifted it and held it to the light. A locket swung from it. It gleamed gold and flashed even in the dim light. She had never seen Sedric wear it, and the moment it had tumbled from its hiding place in his pillow, she knew it was something private. She smiled even as her heart ached. She’d never suspected that he had a sweetheart, let alone that she’d gifted him with a locket. With a sudden wrench, she understood his reluctance to be stolen away from Bingtown, and his agony over being gone so long. Why hadn’t he told her? He could have confided in her, and then she would have understood his driving need to return. His melancholy of the last week suddenly shone in a different light. He was heart-sick. With her free hand, she caught the locket as it swung.

She had not intended to open it. She was not the sort of woman who pried and spied. But as her hand closed on the locket, the catch sprung and it opened in her hand. With an exclamation of dismay, she saw that a lock of gleaming black hair was now escaping from its golden prison. She opened the locket the rest of the way to tuck it back in, and then stopped. Gazing up at her from the locket’s confines were features that she recognized. Whoever had painted the miniature had known him well, to catch his face at just that moment before he burst into laughter. His green eyes were narrowed, his finely-chiselled lips pulled tight enough to partially bare his white teeth. The painting was the work of a skilled artist. She looked down at Hest smiling up at her. What did it mean? What could it mean?

She sank down slowly to sit on Sedric’s bed. With trembling fingers, she poked the curl of black hair, tied with a single golden thread, back into the locket. It took her three tries before it would stay snapped shut. And when it was closed, the mystery only enlarged. For engraved on the outside of the golden clamshell was a single word. ‘Always,’ she whispered to herself.

She sat for a long time as the afternoon sunlight outside the small window slowly died. There could be but one explanation. Hest had had the locket made and entrusted it to Sedric to give to her. Why had he done such a thing?

Always. What did that word mean to her, coming from Hest? Had he feared to lose her? Did he actually care for her, in some thwarted bizarre way that he could not confess to her face? Was that what this locket was supposed to tell her? Or had it been intended as a threat, that ‘Always’ he would keep a hold on her? No matter where she went, no matter how far, or how long she stayed away, Hest held her leash. Always. Always. She looked at the locket in the palm of her hand. Carefully, she lifted the chain and puddled it in a golden coil around the closed locket. She shut her fist around it, thrust her hand inside Sedric’s pillow and dropped it. Carefully, she set the pillow down on his pallet.

Her eyes roved around the small place where she had kennelled Sedric. Dim and small and crowded. Untidy. Completely unlike his personal chambers at their home in Bingtown. He loved high ceilings and tall windows open to the breeze. His desk and shelves were always a model of organization. Hest’s servants knew to stock his room daily with fresh flowers, that he loved fragrant applewood burning in his small fireplace, and hot tea served on an enamelled tray. Scented candles in the evening and mulled wine. And from all that, she had snatched him away and condemned him to this. ‘Sedric, I will make it up to you, I promise. Just be alive. Just be where we can find you. My friend, I’ve treated you badly, but I swear it was not with intent. I swear.’

She stood on her tiptoes to open the small windows to the evening breeze. As soon as they had water for washing, she’d see that his clothes were laundered and hung fresh in his wardrobe. It was all she could do. She refused to consider the futility of promises made to a dead man. He had to be alive and he had to be found. That was all there was to it.

‘That’s simply not possible.’ Thymara spoke firmly.

‘We are not asking you,’ Sintara rejoined. ‘It’s his right.’

‘We do not eat our dead,’ Tats said stiffly.

Evening had fallen, and much to the relief of everyone the river had finally subsided to an almost normal level. The dragons were still belly deep in water, but now they had river bottom to stand on, even if it was thick with a fresh coat of silt and muck. The crew had moved the barge to an anchoring spot that was close to the dragons without threatening the barge with getting stranded. Every keeper had had a hot meal, even if it had been a small one.

Plans for the next day had been set. The keepers, dragons, and the barge would remain where they were for the next two days while Carson travelled a full day down the river and back up again, looking for survivors or bodies. Davvie had wanted to go with him and been refused. ‘I can’t load the boat up with passengers here, lad. I need room to ferry back anyone I find.’

Kase had offered to accompany him in one of the other boats, but with the makeshift paddles they had, Carson had said he would only slow him down. ‘Use the time while I’m gone to see what you can do about carving out some decent paddles. Davvie and I have some extra spear- and arrowheads. Jess had a good stock of hunting equipment in his chest on board, but don’t raid that just yet. I’ve still got hopes that we’ll find him alive. He’s a pretty savvy riverman. It would taken more than a big wave to do him in, I’ll wager.’

Everything had been settled and some of the keepers already settling for the night when the dragons had waded out to surround the barge and Baliper had made his outrageous demand.

Now Mercor spoke. ‘You are free to eat or not eat whatever you desire. As are we. We do devour our dead. It is Baliper’s right to feed on the body of his keeper. Warken should be given to him before his meat rots any more.’ The dragon turned his head to look at his own keeper. ‘Are my words not clear? What is the delay?’

‘Mercor, mirror of both the sun and the moon, what you ask is against our custom.’ Sylve seemed calm but her voice trembled a bit. Thymara suspected that she did not often defy her dragon.

The great dragon spun his eyes at her. ‘I am not asking. To reach Warken’s body, Baliper may have to damage your boat. This, we think, would distress all of you. So, to aid you, we suggest you put his body over the side.’

‘It’s what we’d have to do soon in any case,’ Captain Leftrin pointed out in a low voice. ‘We’ve nowhere to bury him. So, the river will have him in any case, and moments after he’s in the river, the dragons will have him. It’s what they do, my friends.’

If he was seeking to console them, Thymara thought, he was doing it in an odd way. There was not a one of them that could look at Warken’s draped form and not imagine himself lying there.

Sintara picked up the image from Thymara’s mind and agilely turned it against her. ‘If you died tomorrow, which would you wish? To rot in the river, eaten by fishes? Or be devoured by me, and your memories live on in me?’

‘I’d be dead and thus I wouldn’t care either way,’ Thymara replied brusquely. She felt the dragon was using her against the rest of the keepers and was not entirely comfortable with that.

‘Exactly my point,’ Sintara purred. ‘Warken is dead. He no longer cares about anything. Baliper does. Give him to Baliper.’