Alise sat up with a groan, rubbing her shoulder. ‘Are you hurt?’ Thymara asked her again.
‘I’m bruised, but no more than that, I don’t think. What got into him? What got into all of them?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘They’re not stopping,’ Tats observed in awe. ‘Look at them.’
Thymara had thought that when they reached the river, they would halt there. For so long, their lives had been bordered by the forest at the back of the clearing and the river that flowed past it. But now the lead dragons waded out into the shallows and headed upstream. The smaller and less able ones didn’t hesitate, but followed them out into the water. Even the silver and the dirty copper dragon followed the herd out into the murky grey water.
‘Help me up!’ Alise demanded of Sedric. ‘We have to follow them.’
‘Do you think they’re leaving here, just like that? Now? With no thought, no preparations?’
‘Well, they haven’t much to pack,’ the Bingtown woman said, and laughed at her own feeble jest. She sat up, gasped and clutched at her shoulder. Then she caught her breath raggedly and cried out, ‘Sedric, stop gaping at me. Yes, they’re leaving. Couldn’t you feel it? “Kelsingra!” they shouted, and suddenly off they went. They’ll leave us behind if we don’t hurry.’
‘Now wouldn’t that be tragic,’ Sedric observed wryly, but he offered Alise his hand and helped her to her feet.
‘Do you think they know the way?’ Tats asked with interest. ‘I mean, I’ve heard the name of the city, but it’s like hearing about an imaginary land. People say this or that about it, but no one really knows anything about Kelsingra.’
‘I do,’ Alise asserted with quiet confidence. ‘Quite a bit, actually, though I won’t claim to know the exact location, other than that it’s upriver of here, possibly on a tributary of the Rain Wild River. But the dragons will know more than that. They have their ancestral memories to draw on. I suspect they’ll be our best guides.’
‘I’m not sure how much they recall,’ Tats said quietly. ‘My little green dragon seems ignorant of a lot of things.’
‘Such as?’ Alise pushed.
Tats shifted uncomfortably under her focus. ‘Oh, odd things. I was talking with her while I groomed her, but she seemed to have very little to say, so I was chatting about anything at all. I asked her if she remembered being a serpent, and she said no. Then I told her that it had been years since I’d seen the ocean, and she asked me what the ocean was. It was very strange. She knows she hatched from a serpent, but the river seems to be the only body of water she recalls.’ He halted, as if he dreaded admitting something and then added, ‘I don’t think she remembers anything except the life she has had here.’
‘That’s … disturbing,’ Alise agreed. She stared after the dragons, frowning.
Thymara shifted restlessly. ‘We need to follow them.’
The man from the barge, Captain Leftrin, came running across the mudflats toward them. ‘Alise!’ he shouted. ‘Sedric! Get aboard. We need to cast off and follow the dragons as soon as possible. The ship is ready to leave.’
‘I’ll be right there,’ Alise promised, but Sedric shook his head wearily. ‘What is the need to hurry? They’re going upriver. Seems to me that it would be hard for us to lose track of that many dragons on a riverbank.’
‘If the Rain Wild River were a single river, that might be true,’ Thymara said. ‘But it isn’t. There are tributaries that feed into it. Some are seasonal and shallow, but others are rivers in their own right. There’s no telling which one the dragons will follow.’
Captain Leftrin joined them just as she finished speaking. The riverman was panting from his jog across the mudflats. Thymara had met him only briefly, but she already liked him. He was a man who worked. It showed on his weathered face and capable hands, and even on his worn clothing. He looked at her directly when he spoke to her, and even when he had first met the dragon keepers, he hadn’t flinched at the sight of them. It was too soon for her to say she trusted him, but she doubted that he would deliberately deceive anyone. She valued that. He pulled a bright orange kerchief from his pocket and wiped his sweating face before he spoke. ‘The girl’s right. That’s been the whole difficulty with this expedition. “Upriver” from Cassarick can take a man in any of a dozen directions. Unfortunately, no more than three or four of them have been charted, and those charts are unreliable. Channels and waters that were navigable by flatboat one year are sanded-in the next.’
‘But I’ve seen charts of the Rain Wild River. I’ve seen them for sale in the bazaars of Chalced. They’re very expensive and not offered to all, but they exist.’
‘Have you?’ Leftrin grinned at him. ‘I imagine that the same booths will sell you charts to the treasure island of Igrot the Pirate. Or maps of the best harbours in the Spice Islands.’ He shook his head. ‘Cheats and fakes, I’m sorry to say. People know there’s a market for such things, so what they don’t have, they’re willing to create. But don’t feel bad. I’ve seen experienced mariners fooled by them.’
The Bingtown man looked at him. ‘Then how do we know where we are going?’
Captain Leftrin’s grin widened. ‘I’d say our best bet is to follow the dragons.’
Sedric’s hands were sweating. So far, it had all gone so well. He had inside his case two strips of dragon flesh and hide, with scales attached. One he had pushed into a bottle prepared with vinegar and stoppered it securely. The second piece he had placed in a small wooden box with coarse salt around it and latched the lid tightly. One or the other method, he trusted, would work. Both preservation vessels had been prepared weeks ago, before he had embarked on this journey. Once he had realized that Hest was serious, that he was going to force him to go to the Rain Wilds as Alise’s companion, he had been determined that the journey would provide him with a way to escape a life he had begun to find burdensome. Everyone knew that the desperate Duke of Chalced was willing to pay anyone’s asking price for the ingredients that might cure his maladies and extend his life. Sedric had decided he would be the one to furnish them.
And he had succeeded.
Now he was torn between triumph and dismay. He had exactly what he needed to change his fortune. As soon as he returned to Bingtown, he could contact Begasti Cored. The man had been eager to act as a go-between when Sedric had ventured the idea to him. Begasti would arrange his journey and his audience with the Duke of Chalced. It wasn’t just the riches that these scraps of flesh would bring him. It was the complete change in his life that he hungered to experience.
For the first time, he would have money, money that was his, earned solely by his own efforts. Not his father’s money, not his family’s money, not even the inflated wages that Hest paid him for his services. His own money, to spend as he desired. Exactly as he desired. Dreams that had slowly shaped themselves inside his heart for the past four years clamoured to be free. With this money, he could take Hest and they could leave Bingtown. They could go south, to Jamaillia, no, beyond Jamaillia, to lands he knew only as exotic names. There were places where two men could live as they wished to live, without questions, without condemnation or scandal. The money these scraps of dragon flesh would bring him would carry the two of them to those places, far from their families and their histories. It would buy them a future without secrets.
He scarcely dared to taste the thought that followed. It would buy him a future in which he and Hest were on an equal footing. For far too long he’d been completely dependent on Hest financially. The inequity had intruded more and more cruelly into their relationship. Hest was no longer merely