The gold dragon turned his gaze on Sintara. His eyes, black on black, spun accusingly. ‘It isn’t something you can ignore,’ he warned her. ‘The bond goes both ways. What affects one affects all. You could cause great discontent among the keepers.’

‘What does he mean?’ Thymara broke in anxiously.

‘The concerns of dragons are the concerns of dragons,’ Sintara said crushingly.

Mercor did not reply to the girl. ‘It will be like your name, Sintara,’ he said flatly. ‘I will let it go so far, and then I will take charge of it. And perhaps I will take charge of your keeper as well.’

Sintara opened her wings and stretched her neck. She felt what would one day be the frilled spines of her neck stand out. Even so, Mercor was still larger than she was. A glint of amusement in his black eyes only incensed her more. ‘You will never take charge of my keeper,’ she hissed. The barest threat of venom floated on her words. ‘What is mine, I keep.’ Thymara lifted her arms to shield her face and eyes and retreated a few steps.

‘See that you do,’ Mercor replied affably. ‘Keep your keeper as you should, and you have nothing to fret about, little queen.’

The diminutive infuriated her beyond reason. She shot her neck out, jaws wide. Mercor whirled, and a snap of his larger wing slammed the bony joint knob of it against her ribs. She slapped ineffectually at him with her smaller wings as she staggered back. Thymara let out a shriek. All around them on the muddy delta, dragons were lifting heads and opening wings, staring towards the altercation. Keepers darted about like ants in a disturbed nest, squawking at one another.

‘Do you require help, Sintara?’ Sestican asked. The large blue advanced a step towards them, his own wings lifting and the frill on his neck standing out in challenge.

‘Sestican, no!’ his keeper shouted, but the dragon paid no attention to Lecter. His spinning eyes were fixed only on Mercor. The two dragons, wings lifted, heads swaying, regarded one another balefully.

‘I am a queen! I require no help from anyone,’ Sintara replied disdainfully. ‘Keeper! I wish to go to the freshwater river to be cleaned. Get your tools and follow me there.’

It was not a retreat, she thought angrily as she stalked haughtily away. She was simply not interested in anything either of them might do or say. She would not allow the males to fight over her on the ground, as if such an earthbound battle could prove something or win favour with her. No. When the time came, she would soar in flight, and all the males, every one of them, would vie for her and beat each other bloody in an attempt to catch her eye. And when they were eliminated to one, then she would outfly and defy him. Mercor would never master her.

‘Perhaps you could reason with him.’

Leftrin glared at Skelly. She folded her lips and turned away. He wasn’t angry with her, but the idea that Tarman could be reasoned with only irritated him. He’d gone out on deck in the morning to discover that the barge had only hunkered down deeper into the mud in the night. Leftrin had had every hand he could muster straining to shove the ship off for half the morning. It was impossible to ignore that the barge was deliberately resisting efforts to move him. Every member of the crew knew it; the confusion and worry were painted in their eyes.

The keepers were beginning to pick up on the uneasiness. It was strange for him to realize that every one of them must know that Tarman was a liveship, but so few of them seemed to grasp fully what that meant. They seemed to have forgotten that at his core, he was kin to the dragons and just as capable of being cantankerous. Or dangerous.

Leftrin glanced over at Skelly, who was not looking at him. She had her pole over the side again, positioned and ready for when he might demand another effort from them. He pitched his voice for her ears alone. ‘I’ll try. You come with me.’

‘Hold on to this for me, will you?’ she asked Bellin, surrendering her pole to her crewmate. She followed her captain forward. ‘He showed us Kelsingra,’ she whispered. ‘Why would he do that, and then wedge himself in the mud here? Why would he make us want to go there, and then refuse to budge?’

‘I don’t know, but I do know we’re wasting daylight. It won’t be long before the dragons decide they’re ready to go, and we have to be ready to follow them. Not stuck in the mud.’

‘What happened with the dragons earlier this morning?’

‘No idea. Some sort of a dust-up. Not too serious, I suspect, as it was over so fast. Probably just a bit of sorting out as to who’s on top. Happens in any group of creatures, animal or humans. Or dragons.’

He heard his own words and realized a truth he hadn’t before. Dragons were not animals to him in the way that deer or birds were animals. But they weren’t humans, either. It suddenly seemed a very large truth to him. When he had been a boy growing up, he had divided creatures that lived and moved into two groups: animals and humans. And now there were dragons in his life. When, he wondered, had that distinction formed in his mind? When they had begun this expedition, they had been animals to him. Oddly intelligent animals that spoke. But now they were dragons, not animals and not humans.

And what about Tarman, then?

He’d reached the bow and been on the point of putting his hands on the railing. Skin to wood, he’d always felt, was how he heard Tarman best. But now he folded his arms and stood, reordering his thoughts, wondering just how much of them he wanted his ship to know. Tarman reached right into his dreams with apparent ease. How much of his day-to-day thoughts was the ship aware of?

Skelly already had her hands on the railing. ‘Kelsingra was beautiful,’ she said quietly. ‘The best place I could imagine. I wanted to be there. I want to be travelling to Kelsingra now. So, Tarman, old friend, why are we stuck here in the mud? What’s the problem?’

She didn’t expect a direct answer to her query. Neither did Leftrin. Direct answers were not in a dragon’s nature, and that, Leftrin suddenly knew, was what he was dealing with here. He was as much a keeper as any of the youngsters were. Only his dragon had the form of a barge. He was reaching for the railing to put his hands on it when Tarman answered. The whole ship lurched. With a surprised curse, Leftrin’s reach for the railing became a grab. He hung on, hearing the confused shouts from the crew and the keepers aboard as Tarman lurched again. And again. The ship heaved up and settled, heaved up and settled. He could imagine those squat wizard-wood legs and the finned feet shoving and shifting, not unlike a toad resettling itself in the mud. But with every heave and lurch, Tarman was shifting his bow.

‘What is going on?’ Greft was grabbing at the railing as he came staggering down the deck. His teeth were bared behind his narrow silver lips as if he were in pain.

‘Don’t know. Hang on,’ Leftrin said sharply. Something was happening with his ship and he wanted to focus his attention on Tarman, not some cocky young man.

Perhaps Greft picked up a hint of that, or perhaps the glare that Skelly shot him silenced him. He clung to the railing grimly as the Tarman continued to heave and lurch along. When at last he settled, Leftrin waited a few minutes longer before he spoke. The ship had reoriented himself until his stern floated free. The merest push of the poles would now be enough to free the barge’s bow from the muddy bank.

But the most important change was that the Tarman’s bow now pointed up the freshwater river rather than towards the main channel. For a short time Captain Leftrin mulled over what he was seeing. He reached a conclusion and received the assent of his ship.

‘Nothing’s wrong!’ He bellowed at the rising babble and clamour of voices from crew and keepers alike. In the shocked lull that followed his shout, he spoke clearly. ‘We were about to go the wrong way. That’s all. Kelsingra is up this river, not that one.’