‘This half a dragon,’ the silver said, ‘can make you no dragon at all.’ He turned to glare at them, making sure they understood the threat. ‘Name? I TAKE a name. Spit my name. My name what I do. Fente, say my name.’

The small green dragon spun away from him. She tried to remove herself in a dignified way, but dragons were not designed for swimming. She looked hasty and awkward as she scuttled out of his range. Spit laughed, and when Fente turned her head to hiss at him, he released a small cloud of floating toxins at her. The river wind wafted it away before it could do her any harm. Even so, Mercor reacted to it.

‘Spit, save your venom. One of our hunters is gone, and our keepers have lost several of their boats and almost all their weapons. They are not going to be able to hunt as productively as they once did. All of us must strive harder to make our own kills. Save your venom for that.’

‘Maybe I eat Fente,’ Spit suggested poisonously. But then he turned and paddled back to the shallower water. He waded out onto the muddy shore and with a fine disregard for the filth, flung himself down to sleep. Sintara suddenly envied him. It would be so good to lie down. She could sleep. When she woke, Thymara and Alise could clean her. She was already dirty, so a bit more mud wouldn’t make any difference. And it was time they both showed some gratitude for her saving them.

Her mind made up, she slogged to what she judged the highest point on the mudbank and eased herself down to sleep. The mud accepted her shape, coldly at first, but as she lay still, almost as a bed of thick grasses would, it warmed her. She lowered her head to her front legs to keep her nose out of the mud and closed her eyes. It was so good to lie down.

Around her, she could hear the other dragons following her example. Ranculos found his old spot beside her, favouring his left side as he lay down. Sestican settled on the other side.

The dragons slept.

Relpda tore into the carcass with no complaints about how it stank. Sedric wished he could share her equanimity about it. She stood now always at the edge of his mind and thoughts. The stench of the meat and its rank flavour were like ghost memories in his mouth. He pushed them away, trying not to let it taint the fruit that Carson had gathered.

The hunter had come back as he had promised. Relpda had still been reluctant to re-enter the water, so the two men had manoeuvred the floating carcass within reach of her raft. It was streaked with mud and had been sampled by scavengers. Relpda didn’t care. Since they had delivered it to her, her only thought had been to fill her belly.

The smooth-barked trees that had defied Sedric had yielded to Carson. For such a large man, he was very spry. He appeared to have no more difficulty ascending than a spider had in running up a wall. Sedric had tried to follow him, but his river-scalded hands were too tender for climbing. He’d given up when he was just over twice his height up the tree. Even backing down had been tricky. When he launched backward from the trunk, he’d landed badly. Now his ankle was tender.

Carson had returned from his climb just as darkness was falling. He cradled a sling of fruit, some like the stuff that Jess had brought, and two other kinds, one yellow and sweet, and the other the size of his fist, hard and green. So many plants and trees grew in the Rain Wilds, and he knew so little about any of it. He picked up one of the green fruits and turned it in his hands until Carson took it from him without a word and tapped it on the log between them as if it were a hard-boiled egg. The thick green shell peeled away from a pulpy white skin. ‘Eat it all,’ Carson advised him. ‘They don’t taste like much, but there’s a lot of moisture in them.’

Carson had talked himself out. Sedric had heard the full tale of the wave hitting the ship, and how they had ridden it out, recovered the captain, and then discovered most of the missing keepers. Sedric has been shocked to discover that Alise had not been safely on board the vessel, and relieved she was safe. He’d let the hunter talk himself all the way to silence. Now he watched Sedric. He watched him closely, not with a direct stare, but from the corner of his eye and through his lashes. He shared the fruit out evenly between them, with no mention that Sedric hadn’t done a thing to earn his. Even after he fed the dragon, Sedric kept waiting for Carson to bring up a scheme to kill the creature and make a profit on it. If the other hunter and the captain were in on that plot, it only made sense that Carson would be, too. And if Jess had shared his knowledge of Sedric’s specimens with Carson, that would explain him and Davvie being so attentive and visiting Sedric’s room so often. They’d both know that he had brought dragon blood on board the Tarman. Find that trove, and they’d be wealthy men.

When the fruit was gone, Carson had fetched a heavy iron pot from his boat, poured in a small amount of oil and set fire to it. He cut bits of wood and resinous branch tips from the drier hunks of driftwood and fed the fire in the pot. It gave off smoky light and welcome heat, and kept some of the insects at bay. The two men sat, watching the night deepen over the river. Stars began to show in the strip of sky overhead.

Carson cleared his throat. ‘I thought you couldn’t talk to the dragons. Couldn’t understand what they said at all.’

Sedric didn’t have a planned answer to that. He ventured close to the truth. ‘That changed when I began to be around them more. And after she rescued me, after she carried me here, well, we began to understand one another better.’ There. True enough and an easy explanation to remember. The best sort of lie. He stared off across the flat surface of the river.

‘You don’t talk much, do you?’ Carson observed.

‘Not much to say,’ Sedric replied guardedly. Then his manners caught up with him. ‘Except thank you.’ He forced himself to turn and meet Carson’s sincere eyes. ‘Thanks for searching for us. I had no idea what I was going to do next. I couldn’t get up a tree to find fruit, and I’ve never been a hunter or a fisherman.’ More formally he added, ‘I am in your debt.’ Among Traders, those words were more than a nicety. They acknowledged a genuine obligation.

‘Oh, you looked like you were managing well enough,’ Carson replied generously. ‘But usually a man in your situation would be full of his tale, how the wave hit you and what you did’ He let his words trail away hopefully.

Sedric looked off into the darkness. Tell as much of the truth as he could. That would be safe. ‘I don’t remember the wave hitting. I’d gone ashore to, to stretch my legs. When I came around, Relpda had hold of me and was keeping my head above water. Of course, she was swimming downriver with me, and I had quite a time persuading her that we needed to head for what used to be the shore. I was afraid she’d be exhausted before we got here. But we made it.’