Dragon Keeper

CHAPTER TWO The Hatch

Luck brought Thymara to the right place at the right time. It was the best good luck that had ever favoured her, she thought to herself, as she clung to the lowest branch of a tree at the edge of the serpents’ beach. She did not usually accompany her father down to the lower levels of Trehaug, let alone make the journey to Cassarick. Yet here she was, and on the very day that Tintaglia had decreed that the dragon cocoons be uncovered. She glanced at her father, and he grinned at her. No. Not luck, she suddenly knew. He had known how much she would enjoy being here, and scheduled their jaunt accordingly. She grinned back at her father with all the confidence of her eleven years and then returned her gaze to the scene below her. Her father’s cautioning voice reached her from where he perched like a bird on a thicker branch closer to the trunk of the immense tree that they shared.

‘Thymara. Be careful. They’re newly hatched. And hungry. If you fell down there, they might mistake you for just another piece of meat.’

The scrawny girl dug her black claws deeper into the bark. She knew he was only half-teasing. ‘Don’t worry, Da. I was made for the canopy. I won’t fall.’ She was stretched out along a drooping branch that no other experienced limbsman would have trusted. But she knew it would hold her. Her belly was pressed to it as if she were one of the slender brown tree lizards that shared her perch. And like them, she clung with the full length of her body, fingers and toes dug into the wide cracks in the bark, thighs hugging the limb. Her glossy black hair was confined to a dozen tight braids that were knotted at the back of her neck. Her head was much lower than her feet. Her cheek was pressed tight to the rough skin of the tree as her gaze devoured the drama unfolding below her.

Thymara’s tree was one of uncounted thousands that made up the Rain Wild Forest. For days and days in all directions, the forest spread out on either side of the wide, grey Rain Wild River. Close to Cassarick and for several days upriver, picket trees predominated. The wide-spread horizontal branches were excellent for home building. Mature picket trees dropped questing roots from their branches down to the earth far below, so that each tree established its own ‘picket fence’ around its root structure, anchoring the tree securely in the muddy soil. The forest that surrounded Cassarick was much denser than that around Trehaug. The horizontal branches of the picket trees were far more stable than those Thymara was accustomed to. They made climbing and moving from tree to tree almost ridiculously easy. Today she had ventured out onto the unsupported end branch of one, to gain an unobstructed view of the spectacle below her.

Before her, on the other side of the mud flats, the panorama of moving water stretched flat and milky. She had a foggy glimpse of the distant, dense forest on the opposite side of the river. Summer had awakened a million shades of green there. The sound of the river’s rush, of gravel churning beneath its opaque waters, was the constant music of her life. Closer to the shore, on Thymara’s side of the river, the waters were shallow, and strips of exposed gravel and clay broke up the current’s access to the flat clay banks below her tree. Last winter, this section of the river bank had been hastily reinforced with timber bulkheads; the floods of winter had not been kind to them, but most of the logs remained.

For several acres, the bare riverbank was littered with serpent cases like drift logs. Once the area had been covered with tufts of coarse grass and prickly brush, but all that had been destroyed with the wave of sea serpents that had arrived last winter. She had not seen that migration, but she had heard about it. No one who lived in the tree cities of the Rain Wild had escaped the telling of that tale. A herd, a tangle of more than one hundred immense serpents, had come up the Rain Wild River, escorted by a liveship and shepherded by a glorious blue-and-silver dragon. The young Elderling Selden Vestrit had been there to greet the serpents and welcome them back to their ancestral home. He had supervised the ranks of Rain Wilders who had turned out to assist the serpents in forming their cases. For most of that winter, he had remained in Cassarick, checking on the dormant serpents, seeing that the cases were kept well covered with leaves and mud to insulate them from cold and rain and even sunlight. And today, she had heard, he was here again, to witness the hatch.

She hadn’t seen him, much as she would have liked to. Chances were good that he was over at the central part of the hatching grounds, on the raised dais that had been set up for the Rain Wild Council members and other important dignitaries. It was crowded over there, with robed Traders mobbed around the dais, and many of the general population festooning the trees like a flock of migratory birds. She was glad her father had brought her here, to the far end of the hatching area, where there might be fewer cases but also fewer people to block her view. Still, it would have been nice to be close enough to the dais to hear the music and hear the speeches, and to see a real Elderling.

Just to think of him swelled her heart with pride. He was Bingtown stock, of Trader descent, just like her, but the dragon Tintaglia had touched him and he had begun to change into an Elderling, the first Elderling that any living person had ever seen. There were two other Elderlings now, Selden’s sister Malta and Reyn Khuprus, himself of the Rain Wilds. She sighed. It was all like a fairy tale, come true. Sea serpents and dragons and Elderlings had returned to the Cursed Shores. And in her lifetime, she would see the first hatch of dragons within anyone’s memory. By this afternoon, the young dragons would have emerged and taken flight.

The dull grey cases that now littered the riverbank for as far as Thymara could see each held what had been a serpent. The layers of leaves, twigs and mulch that had covered them all winter and spring had been cleared away from them. Some of the cases were immense, as long as a river barge. Others were smaller, like log sections. Some of the cases gleamed fat and silvery. Others, however, had collapsed or sagged in on themselves. They were a dull grey colour and to Thymara’s sensitive nose, they stank of dead reptile. The serpents that had entered those cases would never emerge as young dragons.

As the Rain Wild Traders had promised Tintaglia, they had done their best to tend the cocooned serpents under Selden’s supervision. Additional layers of clay had been smoothed over any case that seemed thin, and then leaves and branches had been heaped protectively over them. Tintaglia had decreed that the cases had to be protected not just from winter storms, but from the early spring sunlight, too. The dragons had cocooned late in the year. Light and warmth would stimulate them to hatch, and so she had wished them to remain covered until high summer, to give the dragons more time to develop. The Rain Wild guardians and the Tattooed – former Jamaillian slaves, now freed – had done their best. That had been part of the bargain the Rain Wilds Traders had struck with the dragon Tintaglia. She had agreed to guard the mouth of the Rain Wilds River against incursions by the Chalcedeans: in return, the Traders had promised to help the serpents reach their old cocooning grounds and tend them while they matured inside the cases. Both sides had kept their bargains. Today would see the fruit of that agreement as a new generation of dragons, dragons allied with Bingtown and the Rain Wilds, rose in their first flight.

The winter had not been kind to the dragon cases. Tearing winds and pounding rains had taken their toll on them. Worst, once the storm-swollen river had swept through the cocooning grounds, damaging many of the cases as it rolled them up against others or ate away at the protective clay. The count taken after the flood had subsided showed that a full score of the cocoons had been swept away. Of the seventy-nine cocooned dragons, only fifty-nine remained, and some were so battered that it was doubtful the occupants had survived. Flooding was a familiar hazard of living in the Rain Wilds, but it grieved Thymara all the same. What, she wondered, had become of those missing cases and the half-formed dragons within them? Had they been eaten by the river? Washed all the way to the salt sea?

The river ruled this forested world. Wide and grey, its current and depth fluctuated wildly. No real banks confined it. It flowed where it wished, and nowhere in Thymara’s world was ‘dry ground’ a meaningful phrase. What was forest floor today might be swamp or slough tomorrow. The great trees alone seemed impervious to the river’s shifting flow, but even that was not a certainty. The Rain Wilders built only in the largest and stoutest trees; their homes and walkways bedecked the middle branches and trunks of the forest trees like sturdy garlands. Their swaying bridges spanned from tree to tree, and closer to the ground, where the trunks and limbs were thickest, sturdy structures housed the most important markets and provided dwelling space for the wealthiest families. The higher one went in the trees, the smaller and more lightweight the structures became. Rope-and-vine bridges joined the neighbourhoods, and staircases spiralled up the main trunks of the huge trees. As one ascended, the bridges and walkways became flimsier. All Rain Wilders had to have some level of limbsmen skills to move throughout their settlement. But few had Thymara’s skill.

Thymara had no trepidations about her precarious roost. Her mind was occupied and her silver-grey eyes filled with the wonders unfolding below her.

The sun had risen high enough that its slanting rays could reach over the tall branches of the forest and rest on the serpent cocoons littering the beach. It was not an exceedingly warm day for summer, but some of the cases had begun to steam and smoke as the sun warmed them. Thymara focused her attention on the large case directly below her. The rising steam reached her, carrying a reptilian stink with it. She narrowed her nostrils and gazed in rapture. Below her, the wizardwood of the log was losing its solidity.

Thymara was familiar with wizardwood; for years her people had used it as exceptionally strong timber. It was hard, far beyond what other people called ‘hardwood’. Working it could blunt an axe or dull a saw in less than a morning. But now the silvery-grey ‘wood’ of the dragon case below was softening, steaming and bubbling, sagging to mould around the still form within it.

As she watched, the form twitched and then gave a lively wriggle. The wizardwood tore like a membrane. The liquefied cocoon was being absorbed by the skeletal creature inside the log. As Thymara watched, the dragon’s meagre flesh plumped and colour washed through it. It was smaller than she had expected it to be, given the size of the case and what she had heard of Tintaglia. A cloud of stink and moisture wafted up and then the blunt-nosed head of a dragon thrust clear of the sagging log.

Outside!

Thymara felt a wave of vertigo as the dragon-speak touched her mind. Her heart leapt like a bird bursting into upward flight. She could hear dragons! Ever since Tintaglia had appeared, it had become clear that some folk could ‘hear’ what a dragon said, while others heard only roaring, hissing and a sinister rattling. When Tintaglia had first appeared in Trehaug and spoken to the crowd, some had heard her words right away. Others had shared nothing of her thoughts. It thrilled Thymara beyond telling to know that if a dragon ever deigned to speak to her, she would hear it. She edged lower on the branch.

‘Thymara!’ her father warned her.

‘I’m careful!’ she responded without even looking at him.

Below her, the young dragon had opened a wide red maw and was tearing at the decaying fibres of the log that bound her. Her. Thymara could not say how she knew that. For a newly-hatched thing, her teeth were certainly impressive. Then the creature ripped a mouthful of the sodden wizardwood free, tossed her head back and swallowed visibly. ‘She’s eating the wizardwood!’ she called to her father.

‘I’ve heard they do that,’ he called back. ‘Selden the Elderling said that when he witnessed Tintaglia’s emergence, her cocoon melted right into her skin. I think they derive strength from it.’

Thymara didn’t reply. Her father was obviously right. It did not seem possible that an enclosure that had held a dragon would now fit inside the belly of one, but the dragon below her seemed intent on trying to consume it all. She continued to struggle free of the confining case as she ate her way out of it, ripping off fibrous chunks and swallowing them whole. Thymara grimaced in sympathy. It seemed tragic that something so newly born could be so ravenously hungry. Thank Sa she had something she could eat.

A collective gasp from the watching crowd warned Thymara. She clutched her tree limb more tightly just in time. The gush of pushed air that swept past her nearly tore her loose and left her branch swaying wildly. An instant later, there was a huge thump that vibrated through her tree as Tintaglia landed.

The queen dragon was blue and silver and blue again, depending on how the sunlight struck her. She was easily three times the size of the young dragons that were hatching. Watching her fold her wings was like watching a ship lower its sails. She tucked them neatly to her body; then folded them tight to fit as closely against her as a bird’s wings so that her scaled feathers seemed a seamless part of her skin. She dropped the limp deer that hung from her jaws. ‘Eat,’ she instructed the young dragons. She did not pause to watch them, but moved off to the river. She lowered her great head and drank the milky water. Sated, she raised her head and partially opened her wings. Her powerful hindquarters flexed; she sprang high, and two battering beats of her wide wings caught her before she could plummet back to earth. Wings beating heavily, she rose slowly from the river bank and flew off, up river, hunting again.

‘Oh.’ Her father’s deep voice was heavy with pity. ‘What a shame.’

The dragon below Thymara was still tearing sticky strips of wizardwood free from her case and devouring them. A grey swathe of it stuck to her muzzle. She pawed at it with the small claws on her stubby front leg. To Thymara, she looked like a baby with porridge smeared on its cheeks and hair. The dragon was smaller than she had expected, and less developed, but surely she would grow to fulfil her promise. Thymara glanced at her father in puzzlement, and then followed his gaze.

While she had been focused on the hatchling right beneath her tree, other dragons had been breaking free of their cases. The fallen deer and the reek of its fresh blood now summoned them. Two dragons, one a drab yellow and the other a muddy green, had staggered and tottered over to the carcass. They did not fight over it, being too intent on their feeding. The fighting, Thymara suspected, would come when it was time to seize the last morsel. For now, both squatted over the deer, front feet braced on the carcass, tearing chunks of hide and flesh free and then throwing their heads back to gulp the warm meat down. One had torn into the soft belly; entrails dangled from the yellow dragon’s jaws and painted stripes of red and brown on his throat. It was a savage scene, but no more so than the feeding of any predator.

Thymara glanced at her father again, and this time she caught the true focus of his gaze. The feeding dragons, hunched over the rapidly diminishing carcass, had blocked her view. The young dragon her father was watching could not stand upright. It wallowed and crawled on its belly. Its hindquarters were unfinished stubs. Its head wobbled on a thin neck. It gave a sudden shudder and surged upright, where it teetered. Even its colour seemed wrong; it was the same pale grey as the clay, but its hide was so thin that she could glimpse the coil of white intestines pushing against the skin of its belly. Plainly it was unfinished, hatched too soon to survive. Yet still it crawled toward the beckoning meat. As she watched, it gave too strong a push with one of its malformed hind legs and crashed over on its side. Foolishly, or perhaps in an effort to catch itself, it opened its flimsy wings. It landed on one, which bent the wrong way and then snapped audibly. The cry the creature gave was not as loud as the bright burst of pain that splashed against Thymara’s mind. She flinched wildly and nearly lost her grip. Clinging to her tree branch, eyes tightly shut, she fought a pain-induced wave of nausea.

Understanding slowly came to her; this was what Tintaglia had feared. The dragon had sought to keep the cocoons shielded from light, hoping to give the forming dragons a normal dormancy period. But although they had waited until summer, they had still emerged too soon, or perhaps had been too worn and thin when they went in. Whatever the reason for their deformities, they were wrong, all wrong. These creatures could scarcely move their own bodies. She felt the confusion of the young dragon mixed with its physical pain. With difficulty, she tore her mind free of the dragon’s bafflement.

When she opened her eyes, a new horror froze her. Her father had left the tree. He was on the ground, threading his way among the hatching cases, heading directly toward the downed creature. From her vantage, she knew it was dead. An instant later, she realized it was not that she could see it was dead so much as that she had felt it die. Her father, however, did not know that. His face was full of both trepidation and anxiety for the creature. She knew him. He would help it if he could. It was how he was.

Thymara was not the only one who had felt it die. The two young dragons had reduced the deer to a smear of blood and dung on the trodden, sodden clay. They lifted their heads now and turned toward the fallen dragon. A newly-hatched red dragon, his tail unnaturally short, was also making his tottering way toward it. The yellow let out a low hiss and increased his pace. The green opened its maw wide and let out a sound that was neither a roar nor a hiss. Feeble globs of spittle rode the sound and fell to the clay at his feet. The target had been her father. Thank Sa that the creature was not mature enough to release a cloud of burning toxin. Thymara knew that adult dragons could do that. She had heard about Tintaglia using her dragon’s breath against the Chalcedeans during the battle for Bingtown. Dragon venom ate right through flesh and bone.

But if the green did not have the power to scald her father with his breath, his act of aggression had directed the short-tailed red dragon’s attention to her father. Without hesitation, both yellow and green dragons closed in on the dead hatchling and began snarling threats at one another over its fallen body. The red began his stalk.

She had thought that her father would realize that the hatchling had died and was beyond his help. She had expected him to retreat sensibly from the danger the young dragons presented. A hundred times, a thousand times, her father had counselled her to wariness where predators were concerned. ‘If you have meat and a tree cat wants it, leave the meat and retreat. You can get more meat. You cannot get another life.’ So surely, when he saw the red dragon lurching toward him, its stubby tail stuck straight out behind him, he would retreat sensibly.

But he wasn’t watching the red. He had eyes only for the downed hatchling, and as the other two dragons closed on it, he shouted, ‘No! Leave it alone, give it a chance! Give it a chance!’ He waved his arms as if he were shooing carrion birds away from his kill and began to run toward it. To do what? she wanted to demand of him. Either of the hatchlings was bigger than he was. They might not be able to spit fire yet, but they already knew how to use their teeth and claws.

‘Da! No! It’s dead, it’s already dead! Da, run, get out of there!’

He heard her. He halted at her words and even looked up at her.

‘Da, it’s dead, you can’t help it. Get out of there. To your left! Da, to your left, the red one! Get clear of it!’

The yellow and the green were already preoccupied with their dead fellow. They dived on it with the same abandon they had showed toward the deer. Strengthened by their earlier feast, they seemed more inclined to quarrel with one another over the choicest parts. Thymara had no interest in them, except that they kept one another busy. It was the red she cared about, the one that was lurching unevenly but swiftly toward her father. He saw his danger now. He did what she had feared he would do, a trick that often worked with tree cats. He opened his shirt and spread it, holding the fabric wide of his body. ‘Be large when something threatens you,’ he had often told her. ‘Take on a shape it doesn’t recognize and it will become cautious. Present a larger aspect and sometimes it will back down. But never turn away. Keep an eye on it, be large, and move back slowly. Most cats love a chase. Don’t ever give them one.’

But this was not a cat. It was a dragon. Its jaws were wide open and its teeth showed white and sharp. Its hunger was the strongest thing in it. Although her father became visually larger, it showed no fear. Instead, she heard, no, felt its joyful interest in him. Meat. Big meat. Food! Hunger ripped through it as it staggered after the retreating man.

‘Not meat!’ Thymara shouted down at it. ‘Not food. Not food! Run, Da, turn and run! Run!’

The two miracles happened simultaneously. The first was that the young dragon heard her. Its blunt-nosed head swivelled toward her, startled. It threw itself off-balance when it turned to look at her and staggered foolishly in a small circle. She saw then what had eluded her before. It was deformed. One of its hind legs was substantially smaller than the other. Not food? She felt a plaintive echo of her words. Not meat? No meat? Her heart broke for the young red. No meat. Only hunger. For that moment of oneness with it, she felt its hunger and its frustration.

But the second miracle tore her from that joining. Her father had listened to her. He had lowered his arms, turned away and was fleeing back to the trees. She saw him dodge away from a small blue dragon who reached after him with yearning claws. Then her father reached the tree trunk and with the experience of years, ascended it almost as swiftly as he had run across the ground. In a few moments he was safely out of any dragon’s reach. A good thing, for the small blue had trotted hopefully after him. Now it stood at the foot of the tree, snorting and sniffing at the place where her father had climbed up. It took an experimental nip at the tree trunk, and then backed away shaking its head. Not meat! it decided emphatically, and wobbled off, charting a weaving path through the hatching grounds where more and more young dragons were emerging from their wizardwood logs. Thymara didn’t watch the blue go. She had already slithered up onto the top of her branch. She came to one knee, then stood and ran up it to the trunk of the tree. She met her father as he came up. She grabbed his arm and buried her face against his shoulder. He smelled of fear sweat.

‘Da, what were you thinking?’ she demanded, and was shocked to hear the anger in her voice. An instant later, she knew that she had every right to be angry. ‘If I had done that, you’d be furious with me! Why did you go down there, what did you think you could do?’

‘Up higher!’ her father panted, and she was glad to follow him as he led the way to a higher branch. It was a good branch, thick and almost horizontal. They both sat down on it, side by side. He was still panting, from fear or exertion or perhaps both. She pulled her water skin from her satchel and offered it to him. He took it gratefully and drank deeply.

‘They could have killed you.’

He took his mouth from the bag’s nozzle, capped it and gave it back to her. ‘They’re babies still. Clumsy babies. I would have got away. I did get away.’

‘They’re not babies! They weren’t babies when they went into their cocoons and they’re full dragons now. Tintaglia could fly within hours of hatching. Fly, and make a kill.’ As she spoke, she pointed up through the foliage to a passing glint of blue and silver. It suddenly plummeted as the dragon dived. The wind of wildly beating wings assaulted both tree and Rain Wilders as the dragon halted her descent. A deer’s carcass fell from her claws to land with a thump on the clay and without a pause her wings carried her up and away, back to her hunt. Squealing dragon hatchlings immediately scampered toward it. They fell on the food, tearing chunks of meat free and gulping them down.

‘That could have been you,’ Thymara pointed out to her father. ‘They may look like clumsy babies now. But they’re predators. Predators that are just as smart as we are. And bigger than we are, and better at killing.’ The charm of the hatching dragons was fading rapidly. Her wonder at them was being replaced with something between fear and hate. That creature would have killed her father.

‘Not all of them,’ her father observed sadly. ‘Look down there, Thymara. Tell me what you see.’

From this higher vantage point, she had a wider view of the hatching grounds. She estimated that a fourth of the wizardwood logs would never release young dragons. The dragons that had hatched were already sniffing at the failed cases. As she watched, one young red dragon hissed at a dull case. A moment later, it began to smoke, thin tendrils of fog rising from it. The red set its teeth to a wizardwood log and tore off a long strip. That surprised Thymara. Wizardwood was hard and fine-grained. Ships were built from it. But now the wood seemed to be decaying into long fibrous strands that the young dragons were tearing free and eating greedily. ‘They are killing their own kind,’ she said, thinking that was what her father wished her to see.

‘I doubt it. I think that in those logs, the dragons died before they could break free of their cases. The other dragons know that. They can smell it, probably. I think something in their saliva triggers a reaction to soften the logs and make them edible. Probably the same reaction that makes the logs break down as the youngsters are hatching. Or maybe it’s the sunlight. No, that wasn’t what I was talking about.’

She looked again. Young dragons wandered unsteadily on the clay beach. Some had ventured down to the water’s edge. Others clustered around the sagging cases of the failed dragons, tearing and eating. Of the deer that Tintaglia had brought and of the dead hatchling, scarcely a smear of blood remained. Thymara watched a dragon with stubby forelegs sniffing at the sand where it had been. ‘He’s badly formed.’ She looked at her father. ‘Why are so many of them badly formed?’

‘Perhaps …’ her father began but before he could speak on, Rogon dropped down from a higher branch to join them. Her father’s sometime hunting partner was scowling.

‘Jerup! You’re unharmed then! What were you thinking? I saw you down there and saw that thing go for you. From where I was, I couldn’t see if you’d made it up the trunk or not! What were you trying to do down there?’

Her father looked down, half smiling, but perhaps a bit angry as well. ‘I thought I could help the one that was being attacked. I didn’t realize it was already dead.’

Rogon shook his head contemptuously. ‘Even if it wasn’t, there would be no point. Any fool could see it wasn’t fit to live. Look at them. Half of them will be dead before the day is out, I should think. I had heard rumours that the Elderling boy was concerned something like this might happen. I was just over at the dais; no one knows how to react. Selden Vestrit is visibly devastated. He’s watching, but not saying a word. No music playing now, you can bet. And half of those important folks clutching scrolls with speeches on them won’t give them now. You never saw so many important people with so little to say. This was supposed to be the big day, dragons taking to the skies, our agreement with Tintaglia fulfilled. And instead, there’s this fiasco.’

‘Does anyone know what went wrong?’ Her father asked his question reluctantly.

His friend tossed his wide shoulders in a shrug. ‘Something about not enough time in the cocoons, and not enough dragonspit to go around. Bad legs, crooked backs – look, look at that one there. It can’t even lift its head. The sooner the others kill it and eat it, the kinder for it.’

‘They won’t kill it.’ Thymara’s father spoke with certainty. She wondered how he knew it. ‘Dragons don’t kill their own kind, except in mating battles. When a dragon dies, the others eat them. But they don’t kill one another for food.’

Rogon had sat down on the tree limb next to her father. He swung his bare callused feet lazily. ‘Well, there’s no problem that doesn’t benefit someone. That’s what I was coming to talk to you about. Did you see how quickly they ate that deer?’ He snorted. ‘Obviously they can’t hunt for themselves. And not even a dragon like Tintaglia can possibly hunt enough to feed them all. So I’m seeing an opportunity for us here, old friend. Before this day is out, it’s going to dawn on the Council that someone has to keep those beasties fed. Can’t very well leave a hungry little herd of dragonlings running wild at the base of the city, especially not with the excavation crews going back and forth all the time. That’s where we come in. If we approach the Rain Wild Council to hire us to hunt to feed the dragons, they’ll be no end of work for us. Not that we could keep up with the demand, but while we can, the pay should be good. Even with the big dragon helping us kill for them, we’ll quickly run short of meat animals for them. But for a while, we should do well.’ He shook his head and grinned. ‘I don’t like to think of what will happen when the meat runs out. If they don’t turn on one another and eat their kin, well, I fear that we’ll be the closest prey. These dragons were a bad bargain.’

Thymara spoke. ‘But we made a deal with Tintaglia. And a Trader’s word is his bond. We said we’d help Tintaglia take care of them if she kept the Chalcedeans away from our shores. And she has done that.’

Rogon ignored her. Rogon always ignored her. He never treated her as badly as some of the others did, but he never looked directly at her or replied to her words. She was accustomed to that. It wasn’t personal. She glanced away from the men, caught herself cleaning her claws on the tree’s bark, and stopped. She looked back at them. Her father had black nails. So did Rogon. Sometimes it seemed such a small difference to her, that her father had been born with black nails on his hands and feet and that she had been born with claws, like a lizard. Such a small difference on which to base a life-or-death decision.

‘My daughter speaks the truth,’ her father said. ‘Our Council agreed to the bargain; they have no choice but to live up to it. They thought their promise to aid the dragons would end with the hatching. Obviously, it isn’t going to.’

Thymara resisted the impulse to squirm. She hated it when her Da forced his comrades to acknowledge her existence. It was better when he allowed them to ignore her. Because then she could ignore them as well. She looked aside and tried not to listen to the men as they discussed the difficulties of hunting enough meat to feed that many dragons, and the impossibility of simply ignoring the newly-hatched dragons at the base of the city. There were ruins beneath the swampy grounds of Cassarick. If the Rain Wilders wanted to excavate them for Elderling treasure, then they’d have to find some way to keep these young dragons fed.

Thymara yawned. The politics of the Rain Wild Traders and the dragons would never have anything to do with her and her life. Her father had told her that she should still care about things like that, but it was hard to force herself to be interested in situations she would never have a say in. Her life was apart from such things. When she considered her future, she knew she was the only one she could ever rely on.

She looked down at the dragons and suddenly felt queasy. Her father had been right. And Rogon was right. Below her, young dragons were dying. Their fellows were not killing them, though they did not hesitate to ring the ones that had collapsed, eagerly waiting for them to shudder out a final breath. So many of them, she thought, so many of the hatched dragons had emerged unfit to face the harsh conditions of the Rain Wilds. What had gone wrong? Was Rogon right?

Tintaglia paid another swooping visit. Another carcass plummeted from above, narrowly missing the young dragons that had gathered at her approach. Thymara didn’t recognize the beast she had dropped. It was larger than any deer she had ever seen and had a rounded body with coarse hair. She glimpsed a thick leg with a split hoof before the mob of dragons hid it from her view. She didn’t think that was a deer; not that she had seen many deer. The swampy tussocks that characterized the forest floor of the Rain Wilds were not friendly to deer. One had to journey days and days to get to the beginning of the foothills that edged the wide river valley. Only a fool hunted that far from home. Such hunters consumed food on the way there, and had to eat from their kill on the way back. Often the meat that survived the journey was half spoiled, or so little of it remained that the hunter would have been better off to settle for a dozen birds or a good fat ground lizard closer to home. The dropped creature had a glossy black hide and a big hump of flesh on its shoulders and wide sweeping horns. She wondered what it was called and then a brief touch of dragon mind told her. Food!

A rising note of anger in Rogon’s voice drew her unwilling attention back to the men’s conversation. ‘All I’m saying, Jerup, is that if those creatures don’t get up on their legs and learn to fly and hunt for themselves within the year, they’ll either die or become menaces to folk. Bargain or no, we can’t be responsible for them. Any creature that can’t feed itself doesn’t deserve to live.’

‘That wasn’t the bargain we struck with Tintaglia, Rogon. We didn’t barter for the right to decide if those creatures would live or die. We said we’d protect them in return for Tintaglia protecting the river mouth from Chalcedean ships. The way I see it, we’d be wise to keep our end of the bargain, and give those youngsters a chance to grow and survive.’

‘A chance.’ Rogon pursed his mouth. ‘You’ve always cared too much about giving chances to things, Jerup. One day it will be the death of you. It nearly was today! Did that creature think about giving you “a chance” to live? No. And we won’t even speak of what sort of fortune you bought for yourself eleven years ago with the last thing you gave “a chance to live”.’

‘No. We won’t,’ her father agreed abruptly, in a voice that was anything but agreeable.

Thymara hunched her shoulders, wishing she could make herself smaller, or suddenly take on the colours of the bark like some of the tree lizards could. Rogon meant her. And he was speaking loud and clear because he wanted her to hear. She shouldn’t have tried to speak to him, and her father should not have tried to force him to acknowledge her. Camouflage was always better than fighting.

Despite his harsh words about her, she knew Rogon was her father’s friend. They had grown up together, had learned their hunting and limbsman skills together, had been friends and companions throughout most of their lives. She had seen them together in the hunt, moving as if they were two fingers on the same hand, closing in on whatever prey they stalked. She had seen them laughing and smoking together. When Rogon injured his wrist and couldn’t hunt or harvest for a season, her father had hunted for both families. She had helped him, though she had never gone with him to deliver the food they took. No sense rubbing Rogon’s nose in the fact that he was accepting aid from someone who should never have been born.

Their friendship was what had made Rogon come down the tree so swiftly to check on her father’s safety. It was what had made him angry at her father for risking himself. And ultimately, it was why he wished that she didn’t exist. He was her father’s friend, and he hated to see what her existence had done to her father’s life. She was a burden to him, a mouth to feed, with no hope that she would ever be an asset.

‘I don’t regret my decision, Rogon. And make no mistake about it. It was my decision, not Thymara’s. So if you want to blame anyone, blame me, not her. Ignore and exclude me, not her! I was the one who followed the midwife. I was the one who went down and picked up my child and brought her home again. Because I looked at her and from the moment she was born, I knew she deserved a chance. I didn’t care about her toe-nails, or if there was a line of scales up her spine. I didn’t care how long her feet were. I knew she deserved a chance. And I was right, wasn’t I? Look at her. Ever since she was old enough to follow me up into the canopy or along the branchways, she has proved her worth. She brings home more than she eats, Rogon. Isn’t that the measure of a hunter or gatherer’s value to the people? Just what is it that makes you uncomfortable when you look at her? Is it that I broke some silly set of rules and wouldn’t let my child be carried off and eaten? Or is it that you look at her and see that those rules were wrong, and wonder how many other babies could have grown up to be Rain Wilders?’

‘I don’t want to have this conversation,’ Rogon said suddenly. He stood up so abruptly that he nearly lost his balance. Something her father had said had hit a nerve with him. Rogon was among the best of the limbsmen. Nothing ever rattled him. Sudden cold crept through her. Rogon had children. Two of them, both boys. One was seventeen and the other was twelve. Thymara wondered if his wife had never been pregnant in the years between the two. Or if she had miscarried. Or if the midwife had carried a squalling bundle or two away from his home and off into the Rain Wilds night.

She turned her gaze back to the riverbank below and kept it there. She wondered if her father had just ended a lifelong friendship with his harsh words. Don’t think about it, she counselled herself, and stared down at the dragons. There were fewer than there had been, and almost nothing remained of the logs that hadn’t hatched. Some people would be disappointed by that. Wizardwood was a very valuable substance, and there had been speculation that when the dragons did emerge, the log husks that were left might be salvageable. Of the folks who had gathered to watch the dragons emerge, some would have been hoping for a profit rather than coming to witness an amazing event. Thymara tried to count the dragons that remained. She knew there had been seventy-nine wizardwood logs to start with. How many had yielded viable dragons? But the creatures kept milling around, and when Tintaglia made another pass and dropped a freshly-killed buck, it created a chaos that destroyed her effort at counting. She felt her father move to crouch on the limb beside her. She spoke before he could. ‘I make it at least thirty-five,’ she said, as if she had never heard his words to Rogon.

‘Thirty-two. It’s easier if you count them by colour groups and then add them up.’

‘Oh.’

A little silence fell before he spoke again. His voice was deeper and serious.

‘I meant what I said to him, Thymara. It was my decision. And I’ve never regretted it.’

She was silent. What could she say to that? Thank him? Somehow that seemed cold. Should a child ever have to thank a parent for being alive, thank her father that he hadn’t allowed her to be exposed? She scratched the back of her neck, digging her claws along the line of scales there to calm an itch, and then clumsily changed the subject. ‘How many of them do you think will survive?’

‘I don’t know. I suppose a great deal will depend on how much Tintaglia brings them to eat, and how well we keep our promise to the big dragon. Look over there.’

The strongest of the young dragons had already converged on the fallen meat. It was not that they deliberately deprived their weaker brethren; it was simply that only so many could cluster around the kill, and the first ones there were not giving way. But that was not what her father was pointing to. At the edge of the hatching ground, a group of men were approaching carrying baskets. Many of them had Tattooed faces. They were recent immigrants to the Rain Wilds, former slaves trying to build a new life here. As she watched, the foremost man darted out, dumped his basket and hastily retreated. A silver heap of fish spilled out, skidding against each other to spread over the dull grey of the riverbank. The second man added his load to the slithering pile, and then the third.

The crowded-out dragons had noticed. Slowly they turned, staring, and then as if animated by a single will, they left the huddle of feeding dragons and raced toward the food, their wedge-shaped heads extended on their serpentine necks. The fourth man looked up, gave a yell, and dropped his load. The rolling basket spilled fish as it went. The man made no pretence; he spun and fled at a dead run. Three more men behind him dumped their loads where they stood and ran. Before the fleeing men had reached the line of trees, the dragons were on the fish. They reminded Thymara of birds as each dragon seized a fish and then flung its head back to swallow. Behind the first rank of dragons, others came. This rank of dragons lurched and stumbled. They were the lame and the halt, the blind and, Thymara thought, the simply stupid. They tottered over, giving shrill roars as they came. A pale blue one fell suddenly on its side and just lay there, kicking its feet as if it were still moving toward the feed. For now, the others ignored it. Soon, Thymara knew, it would become food for the rest.

‘They seem to like fish,’ she said, to avoid saying anything else.

‘They probably like any form of meat. But look. It’s already gone. That was a morning’s catch, and it’s gone in just a few heartbeats. How can we keep up with appetites like those? When we made our bargain with Tintaglia, we thought the hatchlings would be like her, independent hunters within a few days of hatching. But unless I’m mistaken, not a one of those can use its wings yet.’

The young dragons were licking and snuffing at the clay. One green one lifted up his head and let out a long cry, but Thymara could not decide if it was a complaint or a threat. He lowered his head, and became aware that the blue dragon had stopped kicking its feet. The green lurched toward it. The others, noting his sudden interest, also began to hasten in that direction. The green broke into a rocking trot. Thymara looked away from them. She didn’t want to see them eat the blue.

‘If we can’t feed them, I suppose that the weak ones will starve. After a time, there will be few enough dragons that we can feed them.’ She tried to speak calmly and maturely, voicing the fatality that underpinned the philosophy of most Rain Wild Traders.

‘Do you think so?’ her father asked. His voice was cool. Did he rebuke her? ‘Or do you think they might find other meat?’

Blood, so coppery and warm. That was what she wanted. She snaked out her long tongue and licked her own face, not just to clean it, but to gather in any smear of food that might be left there. The deer had been excellent, unstiffened and warm. The entrails had steamed their delightful aroma when her jaws closed on the deer’s belly. Delicious, delicate … but there had been so little of it. Or so her stomach told her. She had eaten almost a quarter of a deer. And all of the cocoon that she had not absorbed during her hatch, she had devoured. She should feel, if not satiated, at least comfortable. She knew that was so, just as she knew so much else about being a dragon. After all, she had generation after generation of memories at her beck and call. She had only to cast her mind back to know the ways of her kind.

And to take a name, she suddenly remembered. A name. Something fitting, something appropriate to one of the Lords of the Three Realms. She pushed her hunger from her mind for the moment. First a name, and then a good grooming. And then, after preening her wings, to hunt. To a hunt and a kill that she would share with no one! The thought of that flushed through her. She lifted her folded wings from her back and gently waved them. The action would pump her blood more swiftly through the tough membranes. The wind they generated nearly pushed her off her feet. She gave a challenging caw, just to let anyone who might think of mocking her know that she had intended that sudden sideways step. She’d caught her balance now. What colour was she, in this life? She limbered her neck and then turned to inspect herself. Blue. Blue? The most common colour for a dragon? She knew a moment’s disappointment but then pushed it aside. Blue. Blue as the sky, all the better to conceal herself during flight. Blue as Tintaglia. Blue was nothing to be modest about. Blue … was … Blue was … No. Blue is. ‘Sintara!’ She hissed her name, trying it on the air. Sintara. Sintara of the clear blue morning skies of summer. She lifted her head, drew in a breath, and then threw her head back. ‘Sintara!’ she trumpeted, proud to be the first of this summer’s hatch to name herself.

It did not come out well. She had not taken a deep enough breath, perhaps. She threw her head back again, drew the wind into her lungs. ‘Sintara!’ she trumpeted again, and as she did, she reared onto her hind legs and then sprang upward, stretching her wings.

A dragon carries within her the memories of all her dragon lineage. They are not always in the forefront of her mind, but they are there to draw on, sometimes deliberately when seeking information, sometimes welling up unobtrusively in times of need. Perhaps that was why what happened next was so terrible. She lifted unevenly from the ground; one of her hind legs was stronger than the other. That was bad enough. But when she tried to correct it with her wings, only one opened. The other clung to itself, tangled and feeble, and unable to catch herself, she crashed to the muddy riverbank and lay there, bewildered, on her side. The physical impact was debilitating, but she was just as stunned by the certainty that, for as far back as her memories could reach, nothing like this had ever happened to any dragon in her lineage. She could not assimilate the experience at first; she had no guide to tell her what to expect next. She pushed with her stronger wing, but only succeeded in rolling onto her back, a most uncomfortable position for a dragon. Within moments, she felt the discomfort in the greater effort it took to breathe. She was also aware in a panicky way that she was extremely vulnerable in such a posture. Her long throat and her finely-scaled belly were exposed. She had to get back on her feet.

She kicked her hind feet experimentally, but felt no contact. Her smaller forelegs scrabbled uselessly at air. Her folded wing was partially pinned under her. She struggled, trying to use her wing to roll herself over, but the muscles did not answer her. Finally it was her lashing tail that propelled her onto her belly. She scrabbled to get her hind legs under her and then to surge upright. Sticky clay covered half her body. Anger fought with shame that any of her fellows had seen her in such a distressing position. She shuddered her hide, trying to rid it of the clinging mud as she glared all around herself.

Only two other dragons had looked her way. As she recovered her footing and stared menacingly at them, they lost interest in her and diverted to another sprawled figure on the ground. That dragon had ceased moving. For a brief time the twain regarded him quizzically and then, comfortable that he was dead, they bent their heads to the feast. Sintara took two steps toward them and then halted, confused. Her instincts bade her go and feed. There was meat there, meat that could make her stronger, and in the meat there were memories. If she devoured him, she would gain strength for her body and the priceless experiences of a different dragon’s lineage. She could not be dissuaded because she herself had come so close to being that meat. All the more reason to feed and grow stronger.

It was the right of the strong to feed on the weaker.

But which was she?

She lurched a step on her unevenly muscled legs, and then halted. She willed her wings to open. Only the good one unfurled. She felt the other twitch. She turned her head on her long neck, thinking to groom her wing into a better position. She stared. That was her wing, that stunted thing? It looked like a hairless deer hide draped over a winter-kill’s bones. It was not a dragon’s wing. It would never take her weight, never lift her in flight. She nudged at it with her nose, scarcely believing it could be part of her body. Her warm breath touched the flimsy, useless thing. She drew her nose back from it, horrified at the wrongness of it. Her mind spun, trying to make sense of it. She was Sintara, a dragon, a queen dragon, born to rule the skies. This deformity could not be a part of her. She riffled through her memories, pushing back and back, trying to find some thought, some recall of an ancestor who had had to deal with a disaster such as this. There were none.

She looked again at the two feasters. Little was left of the weakling who had died. Some red glazed ribs, a sodden pile of entrails, and a section of tail. The weak had gone to sustain the strong. One of the feeding dragons became aware of her. He lifted his bloody red muzzle to bare his teeth and arch his crimson neck. ‘Ranculos!’ he named himself, and with his name, he threatened her. His silver eyes seemed to shoot sparks at her.

She should have withdrawn. She was crippled, a weakling. But the way he bared his teeth at her woke something in her. He had no right to challenge her. None at all. ‘Sintara!’ she hissed back at him. ‘Sintara!’

She took a step toward him and the remains of the carcass, and then a gust of wind slapped against her back. She spun about, lowering her head defensively, but it was Tintaglia returning, laden with new meat. The doe she dropped landed almost at Sintara’s feet. It was a very fresh kill, its eyes still clear and brown, and the blood still running from the deep wounds on its back. Sintara forgot Ranculos and the pitiful remains he guarded. She sprang toward the fallen doe.

She had once more forgotten her uneven strength. She landed badly but this time, she caught herself in a crouch before she fell. With a lunge, she spread her forelegs over the kill. ‘Sintara!’ she hissed. She hunched over the dead doe and roared a warning to any who would challenge her. It came out shrill and squawkish. Another humiliation. No matter. She had the meat, she and no other. She bent her head and savaged the doe, tearing angrily at its soft belly. Blood, meat and intestines filled her jaws, comforting her. She clamped down on the carcass and worried it, as if to kill it again. When the flesh tore free, she threw her head back and gulped the mouthful down. Meat and blood. She lowered her head and tore another mouthful free. She fed. She would live.