Above her, both boys were yelling her name, and then accusing one another of making her fall. Let them fight then. It meant nothing to her. Stupid, stupid, stupid. And stupider yet was that tears stung her eyes.

They’d heard the horn long before they saw anything. The three short blasts proclaimed that Carson was returning, and that he had found someone. Leftrin watched as the keepers gathered on the deck of his barge, straining their eyes downriver and talking to one another in low voices. Rapskal and Heeby? The copper dragon? Jess? Sedric?

Personally, he doubted it was Jess. He’d done his best to make certain that the hunter would never return before the wave struck. But if he had survived, what then? How much would he say, and to whom? When the copper dragon came in sight, trudging alongside the two boats, there were cries of relief and joy from the keepers. He squinted, surprised to see that there were two boats. He stared for some time at the figure paddling the second boat and then bellowed out, ‘It’s Sedric! He’s found Sedric! Alise! Alise! Carson’s found Sedric! He’s alive and it looks like he’s unhurt.’

He heard the patter of feet on his deck and a few moments later, she joined him on top of the deckhouse. ‘Where? Where is he?’ she demanded breathlessly.

‘There,’ he pointed. ‘Paddling the second boat.’

‘Sedric paddling a boat?’ she said doubtfully, but a moment later she said, ‘Yes, that’s him. I recognize the colour of his shirt. I can’t believe it! He’s alive!’

‘He is,’ Leftrin said. Unobtrusively, he took her hand. He didn’t want to ask her in words, but he had to know. Did Sedric’s survival change things between them?

She squeezed his hand. Then she let go of it. His heart sank.

Alise watched the two boats approach and tried to separate her emotions. She rejoiced that her friend Sedric had survived. She dreaded the return of her husband’s witness. She was angry at him that he had withheld Hest’s token from her, and amazed to see him engaged in such a physical endeavour as paddling a boat.

The dragons were trumpeting to the copper, and Relpda was responding joyously. At such times, she heard their sounds only as sounds. She felt that she understood the dragons only when they intended that humans should hear and understand them. She was not positive that was so, but suspected that there were some communications they kept to themselves. She should make a note of that idea in her journal, she thought to herself, and instantly felt guilty. It had been days since she had updated her journal, or added any new observations about the dragons. She’d been too busy surviving and discovering herself, she decided. Of her time in the water and how the dragon had saved her, she would write. But of last night? That would remain hers and hers alone, forever.

She and Leftrin had not spoken of it. Today, when they had met at the galley table, and later as she strolled the deck with him, they had maintained their decorum. She had tried not to blush, tried not to stare meaningfully into his eyes. Their silences had spoken more than their words. She did not intend to become a figure of speculation and gossip among the keepers, and she suspected that Leftrin would just as soon keep his privacy from his crew intact. Now she wondered if she would ever again have the opportunity to be alone with him, to speak of what it had meant to her.

Sedric returning was like all her Bingtown past coming back to envelop her. Once he stepped onto the deck again, she was no longer simply Alise. She was Alise Finbok, wife to Hest Finbok, who would some day be Trader Finbok and control the Finbok vote on the Bingtown Traders’ Council. By virtue of their marriage, she owed him not just fidelity but the hope of an heir, and beyond that, she owed him and his family and her own family the decorum and propriety that was necessary for everyone’s social survival.

She didn’t want Sedric to come back. She didn’t want him to be dead, but if by a wish she could have safely transported him back to Bingtown, she would have done so in a breath.

‘I ate a man! I ate the hunter!’ Relpda was triumphant. She blasted the news to all of them, trumpeting it out before she even reached them. She waded out of the shallows and onto the mucky beach to greet them. ‘He threatened my keeper! We fought him and we ate him!’ Her next words unsettled the disrupted dragons even more. ‘My keeper has proven himself worthy. He drank my blood to speak to me, and now he is mine. I shall make him an Elderling, the first of a new kind.’

‘This has not been discussed!’ Mercor objected. ‘You gave him your blood?’ ‘How will you make him an Elderling?’ ‘What is she talking about?’

‘SILENCE!’ Ranculos blasted them with a roar. And when the other dragons fell into a stunned quiet, he rounded on the little copper female. ‘What have you done?’ he demanded of her. ‘You, with less than half the proper wits of a dragon, you have given blood to a human? You have begun to change him? It is bad enough that so many have begun to change, simply from proximity to us. Do not you recall what was decided, ages ago? Have you forgotten the Abominations? Would you bring more of them into existence?’

‘What are you talking about?’ Sintara exploded. ‘Stop speaking in riddles! Is there a danger here for us? What has she done?’

‘She’s eaten a hunter, for one thing. A hunter who was supposed to help provide food for us!’ Ranculos sounded outraged.

Spit snorted. ‘Feed myself now. Don’t need hunter or keeper.’

‘No human has brought us food of any kind for several days now,’ Veras pointed out quietly.

‘They haven’t needed to. There has been plenty of dead fish for us,’ Sestican said.

As the long afternoon had approached evening, the dragons had returned to the vicinity of the barge. The river had continued to drop. Mud-laden bushes and clumps of grass were reappearing as the water continued to retreat. Tonight, at least, Sintara was looking forward to sleeping in a relatively dry spot. And tomorrow, they would resume their upriver journey. Life had almost seemed to be returning to normal before the copper reappeared.

‘One of us should speak to her, not all of us, or we will get no sense at all out of her.’ Sintara left the other dragons to approach the copper. She regarded her closely. Relpda had changed. She moved her body with more certainty, and communicated more clearly. Something had happened to her. She focused herself on the little copper dragon. ‘Relpda. Why did you eat the hunter? Was he dead already?’ she asked the smaller female.

Relpda considered the question as she waded out of the water and up the mud beach towards the gathered dragons. ‘No. But he wanted to kill me. And so my keeper attacked him. And then, when I saw that my keeper was trying to kill him, I took him for meat. It was a good kill for me.’ The copper looked around. ‘There was fish?’

‘The fish is eaten. Tomorrow we will have to move on.’ Sintara tried to bring her back to the topic. She noticed that the other dragons had quietened to listen. ‘What do you mean, your keeper drank blood? And who do you claim as your keeper?’