The two girls had fallen into a rhythm in their paddling, one that sped them along but was not closing the gap between them and the dragons and barge. As they passed a low hanging tree, an explosion of orange parrots startled him. They burst from the branches, shrieking and squawking before the flock reformed and abruptly landed in a taller tree. All three of them started, and then laughed. It broke a tension of silence that he hadn’t been aware of. Suddenly he didn’t want to be alone and lost in his thoughts.

‘I’ll be happy to take a turn paddling,’ he offered.

‘I’m fine,’ Sylve said, turning her head to shoot him a smile. The light caught briefly in her eyes as she did so, showing him a pale blue gleam. As she turned back, he could not help but note how the sunlight also moved on the pink scaling of her scalp. She had less hair than when they had started out. Her worn shirt was torn slightly at the shoulder seam and scaling flashed on the flesh that was revealed there with every stroke of her paddle.

‘I may take you up on that, in a little while,’ Thymara admitted. That surprised him. He had thought her the tougher of the two girls.

Sylve spoke over her shoulder, keeping her eyes on the river. ‘Is your back still bothering you? Where you hurt it in the river that day?’

Thymara was quiet for a time and then admitted grudgingly, ‘Yes. It’s never healed up all the way. The second dunking I got in that wave only made it worse.’

The boat travelled on. They passed a backwater spattered with huge flat leaves and floating orange flowers. The fragrance reached him, rich to the point of rottenness.

Sylve spoke. ‘Have you ever asked your dragon about that?’ Her voice was hesitant and yet determined.

‘About what?’ Thymara replied, equally determined.

‘Your back. And the way your scaling is getting heavier.’

Silence like a block of stone fell on the boat and filled it perfectly. Sedric felt as if he was unable to breathe for the heaviness of it.

When Thymara spoke, she could not hide the lie in her words. ‘I don’t think my back has anything to do with my scaling.’

Sylve kept on paddling. She didn’t turn back to look at the other girl. She might have been speaking to the river when she said, ‘You forget. I saw it. I know what it is now.’

‘Because you are changing in the same way.’ Thymara flung the words back at her.

Sedric felt trapped between them. Why on earth would Sylve bring up such a topic, so private and specific to keepers, while he was in the boat?

Then dread dropped the bottom out of his stomach.

Thymara wasn’t the target of her words. He was. His hand shot up to the back of his neck and covered the line of scales that had started down his spine. Carson had assured him that they were barely noticeable yet. He’d said they didn’t even seem to have a colour yet, unlike the pink of Sylve’s and the silvery glints on Carson’s own scaling. He didn’t say a word.

‘I am changing,’ Sylve admitted. ‘But I was given the choice, and I chose this. And I trust Mercor.’

‘But he left you today,’ Thymara pointed out. He wondered if she were relentless or just tactless.

‘I’ve thought it over, and what Sedric said, too. If, tonight, I were not there when we gathered, then Mercor would go back for me. I know that. But I will be there, and I will have got myself there. It is what he expects of me. I am neither a pet nor a child. He believes I am not only capable of taking care of myself, but that I am worthy of the attention of a dragon, and that I can survive without it.’

When Thymara asked her question, she sounded half-strangled. ‘Why does he believe that of you? How did you convince him?’

Sylve glanced back at them, and an otherworldly smile flitted across her face, ‘I am not sure. But he offered me a chance and I took it. I am not an Elderling yet. But I will be.’

‘What?’ Thymara and Sedric chorused the word together.

Then Thymara added another one. ‘How?’

‘A little bit of blood,’ Sylve said in a near-whisper, and Sedric went cold. A little bit? How much was a little bit? He tried to remember how much blood he’d taken in that night, and wondered how much it took.

‘Mercor gave you some of his blood?’ Thymara was incredulous. ‘What did you do with it?’

Sylve’s voice was very quiet, as if she spoke of something sacred. Or horrifying. ‘He told me to pull a small scale from his face. I did. A drop or two of blood welled out. He told me to catch it on the scale. And then to eat it.’ Her breath caught, and the rhythm of her paddling broke. ‘It was delicious. No. It wasn’t a taste. It was a feeling. It was magical. It changed me.’

With two strong strokes of her paddle, Thymara drove them out of the current and into the shallows. She reached up and caught a branch and held them all in place.

‘Why?’ The question exploded out of her. It sounded as if she asked it of the universe in general, as if it were almost a cry of despair at an unfair fate, but it was Sylve who answered her.

‘You know what we are, Thymara. You know why some of us are discarded at birth. Why those of us who change too much too soon are denied mates and children. If they discover us when we are born, we are denied any future at all. It’s because we change in ways that make us monstrous. And make us die, sooner rather than later, after giving birth to monsters that cannot live. Mercor believes those changes happen to any humans who are around dragons for any length of time.’

‘That makes no sense! Rain Wilders were changing from the very first generation who settled here. Long before dragons came back into this world, children were developing scales, and pregnant women were giving birth to monsters!’

‘Long before dragons came back, we were living where they had lived, and digging into the places where the Elderlings had dwelt. We were plundering their treasures, wearing their jewellery, making timber out of dragon cases. There may not have been dragons walking among us, but we were walking among them.’

A silence held as Thymara digested those words. The water rushed past their canoe. Sedric felt cold and still inside. Blood. Blood from a dragon was changing Sylve. Two drops and one small scale was all it had taken. How much had he taken in? What changes had he triggered in himself? Monsters, they had said. Monsters who didn’t live long, monsters denied any future. Something in the middle of him had gone tight and was twisting, twisting so hard it hurt. He bent forward slightly over his belly. Neither of them appeared to notice.

‘But the blood he gave you will change you more?’

‘It was his blood. He says he will shape my change. He warned me that it doesn’t always work, and that he does not remember all of what a dragon should do to facilitate such a change. But he said the Elderlings did not just happen. Every Elderling who existed was once the companion of a dragon. Well, almost every one. Sometimes humans started to change and even unguided, the changes didn’t kill them. They noticed it in the humans who tended the dragons while they were in their cases and the ones who were present at the hatchings. Some became beautiful and lived a long time, but most didn’t. But the ones the dragons chose as worthy and guided carefully, they became extraordinary and some lived for generations.’

She ran out of words for a moment.

‘I don’t understand.’

‘Art, Thymara. Elderlings were a form of art for the dragons of that time. They found humans they thought had potential and developed them. That was why they cherished them. Everyone cherishes what they create. Even dragons.’

‘And my changes? I was born with the sort of changes one usually sees only in very old women. And since we left Trehaug, I’ve continued to change. The changes are progressing faster than they ever have before.’

‘I’ve noticed. That’s why I asked Mercor if Sintara were changing you. He said he would ask her.’