Nortel nodded wordlessly. The man dishing the porridge glopped a scoop into his bowl. Nortel held his bowl steadily there until the man grudgingly added a bit more. Sylve stepped up to take her place, holding her bowl over the cauldron of porridge. It bobbed as it received its load.

“Well,” Tats said reluctantly, “if we just let those two tag along after us and don’t do anything for them, we’ll be letting them die just as surely as if we left them here to be starved.”

“They aren’t fit to survive,” Alum observed. He was in line behind Tats. “My Arbuc may not be bright, but he’s fast and physically healthy. That’s why I chose him. I thought he had the best chance of surviving the journey.”

“The midwife said I wasn’t fit to survive,” Thymara said quietly as her bowl was filled with porridge. She trailed after Sylve to a pile of hard bread rolls set out on a clean towel. Each girl chose one and then moved on.

“We live in a hard land. A hard land requires hard rules,” Alum said, but he didn’t sound quite as certain as he had a few moments before.

“I’ll take on the copper one,” Tats said quietly. The keepers were settling into a circle to eat. “I’ll clean him up a bit and get some of the parasites off him before we leave this morning.”

“I’ll help you.” Thymara hadn’t noticed Jerd, but there she was, sitting down carefully next to Tats. She balanced her chunk of bread on one knee, then held her bowl in one hand and her spoon in the other to eat.

“I’ll take the silver,” Thymara declared recklessly. Somehow she didn’t think it would sit well with Skymaw. She suspected the dragon would be jealous of any attention she gave the creature. Well, let her see how it felt, she thought, almost vindictively.

“I’ll help you get his tail bandaged up,” Sylve offered.

“And I can get some fish for him, maybe,” Rapskal said as he wedged himself into their circle between Tats and Thymara, blithely unaware that he might be intruding. He dug into his porridge with fervor. “Never got porridge for breakfast at home,” he announced suddenly through a full mouth. “Grain was too expensive for my family. We always had soup for breakfast. Or gourdcakes.”

Almost all the keepers were present now, all crouched or sitting with bowls and bread. Several nodded.

“Sometimes we had porridge with honey,” Sylve said. “But not often,” she added, as if embarrassed to admit that her family had been able to afford such things.

“We usually had fruit, whatever my father and I had gathered the day before and hadn’t sold,” Thymara said, and was ambushed by a wave of homesickness. She looked around herself suddenly. What was she doing here, sitting on the hard ground, eating porridge, and preparing to depart upriver? For a moment, none of it made sense, and the world seemed to rock around her as she realized how far she was from home and family.

“Thymara?”

She nearly dropped her spoon at the man’s voice behind her. She turned and found Sedric standing awkwardly at the edge of their circle. He was impeccably groomed and a fragrance almost like perfume floated on the air. “Yes?” she answered him stupidly.

“I don’t mean to rush your meal, but we are told that the departure time is imminent. I wondered if you could possibly come now to do some translating for me. Alise is already with the dragon . . .”

He let his words trail off. Probably the look on her face had silenced him. She looked aside and tried to calm the sudden jealousy she felt. Alise was already up and talking with Skymaw? This early in the day? Yesterday, when she and Sedric had returned, the light was waning. As the day lost its warmth, the dragons became more lethargic. By the time Thymara and Sedric reached Alise and Skymaw, the dragon plainly wished to be left alone to sleep. She had not been too tired, however, to gulp down the fish they brought her, Thymara recalled wryly. She had felt a great deal of satisfaction at Alise’s unconcealed astonishment at the size of the fish, and her awe at how quickly the dragon devoured it. While Skymaw ate, Thymara had won her grudging permission for Sedric to be present when Alise talked to her. Afterward, Skymaw had immediately headed for the dragons’ sleeping area. Thymara had bid Sedric and Alise good night and watched them go back to the beached barge.

She had noted how Alise took Sedric’s arm, and how he carried all her supplies for her, and wondered what that meant. He’d said he was her assistant, but she sensed there was more between them than that. She wondered if secretly they were lovers. The thought had sent a strange thrill through her, and then she had felt ashamed of herself. It was no business of hers if they were. Everyone knew that Bingtown folk lived by their own rules.