Above her, both boys were yelling her name, and then accusing each other 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 color 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 endeavor as paddling a boat.

The dragons were trumpeting to the copper, and Relpda was responding joyously. At such times, Alise 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 she suspected that there were some communications they kept to themselves. She should make a note of that idea in her journal, she thought, 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 envelope 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.

Day the 26th of the Prayer Moon

Year the 6th of the Independent Alliance of Traders

From Erek, Keeper of the Birds, Bingtown

To Detozi, Keeper of the Birds, Trehaug

A message from Erek, Keeper of the Birds, Bingtown, to Detozi, Keeper of the Birds, Trehaug. In a sealed case, the travel arrangements for Apprentice Reyall to return home to his family to observe a period of mourning, at the expense of the bird keepers. A shipment of twenty-five swift pigeons and six kings has been entrusted to his care on the way. With our deepest sympathy and warmest regards.

CHAPTER TWELVE

THE LOCKET

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.”