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A slow and terrible knowledge rose in Reyn.

He was doomed to see this change in every liveship.

With each stricken or closed face, he would have to confront what his ancestors had done.

Knowingly or not, they had taken the dragons’ lives from them, and then condemned their spirits to a sexless, wingless eternity as ships.

He should have been happy to know that the liveship Ophelia had prevailed in her encounters with the Chalcedeans.

Instead, he did not want to be there when Grag Tenira went down to greet the ship he had loved all his life, and encountered a glowering dragon instead.

It was not only dragonkind he had injured; soon he would see in his friend’s eyes the damage done to Bingtown’s liveship families.

Too many changes, too many chances, he told himself.

He could not sort out what he felt any more.

He should have been joyous. Malta was alive.

Bingtown had formed a solid alliance and had a treaty ready for the dragon’s mark.

The Chalcedeans were vanquished, at least for now.

And sometime in the future, if all went well, there was another Elderling city for him to explore and learn.

This time, he would be in charge, with no plundering or hasty robbing of treasure.

He would have Malta at his side. All would be well. All would be healed.

Somehow, he could not trust it to be real. The brief sensing of Malta that he had received through Tintaglia was like the aroma of hot food to a starving man. The possibility of her was not enough to satisfy the longing in his heart.

At a noise in the building below him, he glanced down, expecting to see a stray dog or cat. Instead, he saw Selden picking his way through the rubble below. ‘Get out of there,’ he called down in annoyance. ‘Can’t you see this whole roof could fall on you?’

‘Which is why you’re sitting on it, obviously,’ Selden called up to him, unimpressed.

‘I just needed a place where I could look out over the harbour and watch for Tintaglia to return. I’m coming down now.’

‘Good. Tintaglia’s gone to groom, but soon she’ll return to make her mark on the scroll the Council has drawn up.’ He took a breath. ‘She wants the Kendry immediately loaded with supplies and engineers and sent up the river so her work can be begun.’

‘Supplies from where?’ Reyn asked sarcastically.

‘She doesn’t much care. I’ve suggested that she should begin with the Kendry just taking builders up there, stopping in Trehaug to pick up folk who know the ways of the river, and then going to the place she wants dredged. They must see what needs to be done before they plan how to do it.’

Reyn did not ask him how he knew so much.

Instead, he came to his feet, and picked his way back to the eaves of the building.

The winter sun woke the glints of scaling on Selden’s brows and lips.

‘She sent you to fetch me, didn’t she?’ Reyn asked as he made the final jump down. ‘To make sure I’d be there?’

‘If she wanted you there, she could have told you herself. No. I came myself to make sure you would be there. So you can hold her to her promise. Left to herself, she will worry first about her serpents and the possibility of other cocooned dragons surviving. If we leave it up to her, it will be months instead of days before she sets out to look for Malta.’

‘Months!’ Reyn felt a surge of rage. ‘We should be departing today!’ A sick certainty came over him.

It would be days. Just signing the contract would probably take a day in itself.

And then the selection of folk to go upriver, and the supplying of the Kendry.

‘After all Malta did to free her, you would think she would have at least a scrap of gratitude for her.’

The boy frowned to himself. ‘It isn’t that she dislikes Malta. Or you. She doesn’t think that way at all. Dragons and serpents are so much more important to her than people, to ask her to choose between rescuing her own kind and saving Malta is like asking you to choose between Malta and a pigeon.’

Selden paused. ‘To Tintaglia, most humans seem very similar, and our concerns seem trivial matters indeed. It is up to us to make such things important to her. If she succeeds in her plans, there will be other dragons sharing our world with us. Only they will see it as us sharing their world. My grandfather used to say, “Start out dealing with a man the way you intend to go on dealing with him.” I think the same may be true of dragons. I think we need to establish now what we expect of her and her kind.’

‘But, to wait days until we depart –’

‘To wait a few days is better than to wait forever,’ Selden pointed out to him. ‘We know Malta is alive. Did her life feel threatened to you?’

Reyn sighed. ‘I could not tell,’ he was forced to admit. ‘I could sense Malta. But it was as if she refused to pay attention to me.’

They both fell silent. The winter day was cold but still under a clear blue sky.

Voices carried, and hammers rang throughout the city.

As they walked together through the Bingtown streets, Reyn could already feel the change in the air.

Everywhere, the bustle of activity clearly spoke of hopes for and belief in tomorrows.

Tattooed and Three Ships people worked alongside Traders both Old and New.

Few of the businesses had reopened, but there were already youngsters on street corners hawking shellfish and wild greens.

There seemed to be more folk in town as well.

He suspected the flood of refugees had reversed, and that those who had fled Bingtown to outlying areas were returning.

The tide had turned. Bingtown would rise from the ashes.

‘You seem to know a great deal about dragons,’ Reyn observed to Selden. ‘Whence comes all this sudden knowledge?’

Instead of replying, Selden asked a question of his own. ‘I’m turning into a Rain Wilder, aren’t I?’

Reyn didn’t look at him. He wasn’t sure Selden would want to consider his face just now.

The changes in Reyn’s own appearance seemed to be accelerating.

Even his fingernails were growing thicker and hornier.

Usually such changes did not come to a Rain Wilder until he reached middle age.

‘It certainly looks that way. Does it distress you?’

‘Not much. I don’t think my mother likes it.

’ Before Reyn could react to that, he went on, ‘I have the dreams of a Rain Wilder now. They started the night I fell asleep in the city. You woke me from one, when you found me. I couldn’t hear the music then, like Malta did, but I think that if I went back now, I would.

The knowledge grows in me, and I don’t know where it comes from.

’ He knit his scaled brows. ‘It belonged to someone else, but somehow it’s coming down to me now.

Is that what is called “drowning in memories”, Reyn?

A stream of memories flow through me. Am I going to go crazy? ’

He set his hand to the boy’s shoulder and gripped it. Such a thin and narrow shoulder to take on such a burden. ‘Not necessarily. Not all of us go crazy. Some of us learn to swim with the flow.’