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‘I THINK IT ’ S PERFECT .’ Keffria could not keep the satisfaction out of her voice.

‘It’s lovely,’ Rache echoed the sentiment. ‘But turn about just one more time for us. A little faster, so the skirts lift just slightly with the motion. I want to be sure the hem is perfectly even before we do the final stitching.’

Malta lifted her arms carefully to avoid the pins and turned on her stockinged feet.

All about them on the floor was the litter of the gown’s making.

Older dresses had been robbed of lace. The bright panels of fabric set into the lavish sleeves of the dress had once been the skirts of another dress.

‘Ah! Like a lily floating on water, when a summer breeze ripples it. You could not be more beautiful.’ Rache was triumphant.

‘Unless she smiled,’ Selden pointed out quietly. He sat on the floor in the corner of the room, his counters spread on the floor before him. Malta had been watching him. He was building castles with them, not working his problems. She was too dispirited to point out his idleness to their mother.

‘Your little brother is right, Malta. The gown cannot brighten your face as a smile can. What is wrong? Are you still wishing we had had a fashionable seamstress do this?’

Of course she was! How could her mother even ask such a question?

For years, she and Delo had talked of their first Summer Ball as young ladies.

They’d drawn pictures of their elaborate gowns, discussed trims and seamstresses and slippers.

Never again would the eyes of Bingtown fall so attentively upon them.

All would see her dressed in a home-stitched dress with made-over slippers.

Every waking moment of summer, she had spent longing for a miracle.

It was useless even to speak of how she felt.

She didn’t want her mother to weep again, or her grandmother to tell her she should take pride in the sacrifices she’d made.

This was the best they could do for her.

What good would it do to speak of her disappointment?

‘It is hard to smile these days, Mother.’ She took a breath. ‘I had always thought I would walk into the Summer Ball on my father’s arm.’

‘As did I,’ Keffria Vestrit replied quietly.

‘It breaks my heart that you cannot have that, Malta. I still remember my first Summer Ball in a woman’s gown.

When they announced me, I was so nervous I thought I couldn’t stand.

Then Papa picked up my hand and set it on his arm.

And we walked in together…he was so proud of me.

’ Her voice choked suddenly. She blinked rapidly.

‘Wherever your father is, my dear, I am sure he is thinking of you as you are of him.’

‘Sometimes it feels wrong to be thinking of the summer parties after the great ball, worrying about dresses and fans and headpieces while he is a prisoner in the Pirate Isles.’ Malta paused. ‘Perhaps we should put this off one more year. Perhaps by then, he would be home.’

‘It’s a little late now to be considering that,’ Grandmother put in from her chair.

She was sitting in the light from the window, trying to fashion a fan from the leftover fabric.

‘I used to know how to do this,’ she muttered crossly to herself.

‘My fingers just aren’t as nimble at this as they used to be. ’

‘I’m afraid your grandmother is right, dear.’ Her mother fussed with the lace at her cuffs. ‘Everyone is expecting us to present you. And it would make our situation with the Khuprus family even more difficult.’

‘I don’t think I like him anymore anyway.

If Reyn were truly interested in me, he would have come to see me again.

’ She twisted her head to look at her mother just as Rache tried to set her headdress in place.

‘Have you heard no more from his mother?’ Rache seized her chin, straightened her head, and pinned the headdress in place.

Keffria frowned at it. ‘It’s too big. It overpowers her face.

We need to make it more delicate. Take it off, we’ll try again.

’ As Rache unpinned it, Keffria asked, ‘What more could she write to us? She sympathizes with our plight. They pray your father will return safely to us. Reyn looks forward eagerly to the Summer Ball.’ Keffria sighed and added, ‘And she suggested, very delicately, that two weeks after the Ball, we might discuss the payment on our debt.’

‘Translation: she wants to see how Malta and Reyn get along at the Ball,’ Grandmother put in sourly.

She squinted at the pretty work in her hands.

‘They have to consider appearances just as much as we do, Malta. For Reyn to call on you too often before you are even presented would be seen as unseemly haste. Besides, it is a substantial journey from the Rain Wilds to Bingtown, not to be undertaken lightly.’

Malta gave a small sigh. So she had told herself, often enough.

But it seemed to her more likely that Reyn had simply decided she wasn’t worth the nuisance of courting her.

Perhaps the dragon had had something to do with it.

She had dreamed of the dragon often since then, and the dreams varied from disturbing to frightening.

Sometimes the dragon spoke of Reyn. She said that Malta was foolish to wait for him.

He would not come to help her. Her only possible hope was to somehow come to the dragon and free her.

Over and over, Malta had tried to tell her that was impossible.

‘When you say that,’ the dragon had mocked her, ‘you are saying, really, that it is impossible for you to rescue your father. Is that what you truly believe?’ That question always left her speechless.

It did not mean she had given up. She had learned a great deal about men lately.

It seemed to her that when she needed their strength or power most, they abandoned her.

Both Cerwin and Reyn had vanished when she asked them for something more substantial than trinkets or sweets.

Reluctantly she acknowledged a second thought.

Just when she needed her own father’s strength and power, he had sailed out of her life.

And disappeared. It wasn’t his fault. She knew that.

It didn’t change what she had learned. You couldn’t depend on men, even powerful men, even when they truly loved you.

To save her father, she was going to have to gather power to herself, and then use it.

Afterwards, she would keep it.

A thought occurred to her. ‘Mother. Father will not be here to escort me into the Summer Ball. Who will?’

‘Well.’ She looked uncomfortable. ‘Davad Restart has offered, of course. He would be honoured; I suppose he feels we owe him something for negotiating for the Paragon…’ Her voice died away apologetically.

Rache gave a small snort of contempt. She ripped the seams out of the headdress as if it were Davad’s face she tore apart.

‘We owe him nothing,’ Ronica Vestrit said firmly. She lifted her eyes from her stitching to regard her granddaughter. ‘You have no obligation to him, Malta. None.’

‘Then…if my Papa cannot be there…I should like to walk in by myself.’

Keffria looked troubled. ‘My dear, I am not sure if that would be proper.’

‘Proper or not, it is fitting. Let her do it.’

Malta looked in astonishment at her grandmother.

Ronica returned the look almost defiantly.

‘Bingtown has left us to stand or fall on our own. Let them see that we stand, even to our youngest daughter.’ Her eyes locked with Malta’s and something almost like understanding passed between them.

‘Let the Rain Wilds know it as well,’ Ronica added quietly.

Althea strode down the docks on the North wall of the harbour.

At every third or fourth step, her skirts hobbled her.

She would slow for a pace or two, then forget herself and step out again.

Out on the beach, she had become accustomed to the luxury of trousers.

Now that Paragon was tied up in town at the liveship dock, she had to make more of an effort to conform, but this was a compromise that suited no one.

Her coarse cotton work-skirt scandalized Keffria and was still too confining to suit Althea.

She longed to be out to sea, where she vowed she would dress as she pleased.

‘Althea!’ boomed Kendry. She halted in her tracks to turn to the liveship with a grin.

‘Good morning!’ She waved up at him. He was riding high today, but by sundown, he’d be heavy with cargo to take upriver.

Barrows of melons were being trundled aboard him as they spoke.

There was little arable soil up the Rain Wild River – most of the foodstuffs had to be brought in.

Kendry made it his regular run. He trafficked in little besides food supplies and Rain Wild goods.

‘Good morning yourself, young lady!’ The figurehead put his fists on the sides of his ship as if they were his hips. He looked down in mock disapproval. ‘You looked so like a scrub girl, I almost didn’t know you.’

She grinned up at his good-natured teasing. ‘Well, you know yourself, it takes more than one scrub girl to keep a liveship clean. I’ll be all over grease and tar before the day is out. Then we’ll see if you recognize me more easily.’

The Kendry had been carved as a handsome young man. His affable grin and wide blue eyes made him a favourite on the liveship dock. Althea was long accustomed to his casual ways with her. ‘It’ll take a rough scrubbing to get that off before the Summer Ball,’ he suggested wryly.

That was a more sobering topic. After much argument with her mother and sister, she had won her way. ‘I won’t be going to the Summer Ball, Kendry. We hope to set sail before then. Besides, even if I went, who would dance with a scrub girl?’ She tried to lighten her words with a smile.