She ached in every limb. She had worked the night through, trying to make their way back to Trehaug. Her exhausted muscles trembled with every effort she demanded of them. Not far to go, she told herself yet again. Their progress had been agonizingly slow. Her head ached abominably but worst was the itching of the healing injury on her forehead. Why must it always itch the worst when she could not spare a hand to scratch?

She maneuvered the tiny rowboat among the immense trunks and spidering roots of the trees that banked the Rain Wild River. Here, beneath the canopy of rain forest, the night sky and its stars were a myth rarely glimpsed; yet a fitful twinkling beckoned her in between the trunks and branches. The lights of the tree-borne city of Trehaug guided her to warmth, safety, and most of all, rest. Shadows were still thick all around her, yet the calls of birds in the high treetops told her that in the east, dawn was lightening the sky. Sunlight would not pierce the thick canopy until later, and when it came, it would be as shafts of light amidst a watery green mockery of sunshine. Where the river sliced a path through the thick trees, day would glitter silver on the milky water of the wide channel.

The nose of the rowboat snagged suddenly on top of a hidden root. Again. Malta bit her tongue to keep from screaming her frustration. Making her way through the forested shallows was like threading the craft through a sunken maze. Time and time again, drifts of debris or concealed roots had turned her aside from her intended path. The fading lights ahead seemed little closer than when they had set out. Malta shifted her weight and leaned over the side to probe the offending obstacle with her plank. With a grunt, she pushed the boat free. She dipped her paddle again and the boat moved around the hidden barrier.

“Why don’t you paddle us over there, where the trees are thinner?” demanded the Satrap. The erstwhile ruler of all Jamaillia sat in the stern, his knees drawn nearly to his chin, while his Companion Kekki huddled fearfully in the bow. Malta didn’t turn her head. She spoke in a cold voice. “When you’re willing to pick up a plank and help with the paddling or steering, you can have a say in where we go. Until then, shut up.” She was sick of the boy-Satrap’s imperious posturing and total uselessness for any practical task.

“Any fool can see that there are fewer obstacles there. We could go much faster.”

“Oh, much faster,” Malta agreed sarcastically. “Especially if the current catches us and sweeps us out into the main part of the river.”

The Satrap took an exasperated breath. “As we are upriver of the city, it seems to me that the current is with us. We could take advantage of it and let it carry us where I want to go, and arrive much more swiftly.”

“We could also lose control of the boat completely, and shoot right past the city.”

“Is it much farther?” Kekki whined pathetically.

“You can see as well as I can,” Malta retorted. A drop of the river water fell on her knee as she shifted the paddle to the other side. It tickled, then itched and stung. She took a moment to dab at it with the ragged hem of her robe. The fabric left grit in its wake. It was filthy from her long struggle through the halls and corridors of the buried Elderling city the previous night. So much had happened since then, it seemed more like a thousand nights. When she tried to recall it, the events jumbled in her mind. She had gone into the tunnels to confront the dragon, to make her leave Reyn in peace. But there had been the earthquake, and then when she had found the dragon… The threads of her recall snarled hopelessly at that point. The cocooned dragon had opened Malta’s mind to all the memories stored in that chamber of the city. She had been inundated with the lives of those who had dwelt there, drowned in their recollections. From that point until the time when she had led the Satrap and his Companion out of the buried labyrinth, all was misty and dreamlike. Only now was she piecing together that the Rain Wild Traders had hid the Satrap and Kekki away for their own protection.

Or had they? Her gaze flicked briefly to Kekki cowering in the bow. Had they been protected guests, or hostages? Perhaps a little of both. She found that her own sympathies were entirely with the Rain Wilders. The sooner she returned Satrap Cosgo and Kekki to their custody, the better. They were valuable commodities, to be employed against the Jamaillian nobles, the New Traders and the Chalcedeans. When she had first met the Satrap at the ball, she had been briefly dazzled by the illusion of his power. Now she knew his elegant garb and aristocratic manners were only a veneer over a useless, venal boy. The sooner she was rid of him, the better.

She focused her eyes on the lights ahead. When she had led the Satrap and his Companion out of the buried Elderling city, they had found themselves far from where Malta had originally entered the underground ruins. A large stretch of quagmire and marshy river shallows separated them from the city. Malta had waited for dark and the guiding lights of the city before they set out in their ancient salvaged boat. Now dawn threatened and she still poled toward the beckoning lanterns of Trehaug. She fervently hoped that her ill-conceived adventure was close to an end.