"No." Reyn's reply was quiet but the dragon's outraged roar rang against the night sky. People cried out in terror and cowered where they stood, but not Reyn. He stood tall and still as the dragon vented her fury.

"Malta first," Reyn dictated calmly as she drew breath.

"Seek for your female, while my kind lies trapped in the cold and dark? No!" This time the blast of anger from the dragon vibrated the floor beneath Keffria's feet. Her ears rang with it.

"LISTEN TO ME, DRAGON," REYN RESUMED CALMLY. "HIGH SUMMER is THE TIME to explore and dig, when the river runs low. Now is the time for us to seek Malta." As the dragon threw back her head, jaws wide, he shouted up at her, "For this to work, we must negotiate as equals, without threats. Will you be calm, or must we both live with loss?"

Tintaglia lowered her head. Her eyes spun angrily, but her voice was almost civil. "Speak on," she bade him.

Reyn took a breath. "You will aid me to save Malta. And I will then devote myself to unearthing the Elderling city, not for treasure, but for dragons. That is our agreement. Your bargain with Bingtown is more complicated. The dredging of a river for the protection of their coast, with other stipulations. Would you have it set down in writing, and the agreement acknowledged as binding?" Reyn looked away from the dragon to Devouchet. "I am willing to be bound by my spoken word in this. Will the Council of Bingtown deal likewise?"

Up on the dais, Devouchet glanced about indecisively. Keffria supposed he was rattled to have control put back into his hands. Slowly the Trader drew himself up. To her surprise, he shook his head slowly. "No. What has been proposed tonight will change the life of every person who lives in Bingtown." The Trader's eyes traveled gravely over the hushed crowd. "An agreement of this magnitude must be written and signed." He took a breath. "Moreover, I propose that it must be signed, not just by our leaders, but as we did of old in Bingtown, when every Trader and every member of the Trader's family set hand to the document. But this time, marks must be made by every person, young and old, who wishes to remain in Bingtown. All who sign will bind themselves, not just to an agreement with the dragon, but to each other."

A mutter ran through the crowd, but Devouchet spoke on. "Everyone who makes a mark agrees to be bound by the rules of old Bingtown. In turn, each head of a family will gain a vote on the Bingtown Council, as it was of old." He looked around, including the leaders on the dais. "All must agree that the Bingtown Council's judgments upon their disputes will be final." He took a deep breath. "And then, I think, there must be a vote to choose new members of the new Bingtown Council. To assure that every group gains a voice."

Devouchet's eyes went back to the dragon. "You, too, must make a mark to signify your agreement. Then the Kendry must be returned to us, and the other liveships summoned back, for without them no workers or materials can be carried upriver. Then you must look at our charts with us, and help us mark out the stretches of the river that we do not know, and show us where this deepening of the river must occur."

People were nodding, but the dragon gave a loud snort of disgust. "I have no time for this writing and marking! Regard it as done, and let us begin tonight!"

Reyn spoke before anyone else could. "Swift is better; on that you and I agree. Let them set their words to paper. Between you and me, I offer you my word, and I am willing to take yours."

Reyn took a breath. When he spoke again, he made his tone formal. "Dragon Tintaglia, do we have a bargain?"

"We do," the dragon replied heavily. Tintaglia looked at Devouchet and the others on the dais. "Set your pen to paper, and do it swiftly. I am bound by my name and not by a mark. Tomorrow, Tintaglia begins to do what she has promised. See that you are as quick to keep your word."

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN — Loyalties

KENNIT LOOKED DOWN AT THE SCROLL IN HIS HAND. THE PIECES OF WAX SEAL ON his desk had borne the sigil of Sincure Faldin. That worthy merchant had adapted to the loss of his wife and one daughter. His sons and his ship had survived the slavers' raid on Divvytown unscathed, for they had been out trading at the time. As Kennit had predicted to Sorcor, Sincure Faldin had accepted Sorcor's marriage to Alyssum, for the Durjan merchant had always been swift to see where power resided. This urgent message was but one more effort by him to curry goodwill with Kennit. As such, he regarded it suspiciously.

The writing on the scroll was laboriously elaborate, and the wording stilted. A full third of the page was an opulent greeting and wish for Kennit's good health. How like the overdressed Durjan merchant, to waste his ink and his time so painstakingly before unfolding his dire news. Despite the hammering of his heart, Kennit forced himself to reread the scroll with an impassive face. He sifted facts from the merchant's flowery prose. Faldin had mistrusted the strangers who came to Divvytown, and had been among the first to suspect the ship was a liveship. He had had his son lure the captain and his woman into his shop and ply them with tales to get them to divulge some of their own history, but to little avail.

Their abrupt departure in the middle of the night was as strange as their arrival had been, and tales told the next day by men who had deserted the ship bore out his suspicions. On board was one Althea Vestrit, who claimed ownership of the Vivacia. The crew of the liveship had been oddly mixed, men and women, but the captain had been that Brashen fellow, lately of the Springeve, and before that, Bingtown born and bred, or so rumor had it. If one could believe deserters, the ship's true mission was to reclaim the liveship Vivacia. The ship had been a liveship, the figurehead badly damaged, and by name Paragon.

The inked name seemed to burn into his eyes. It was hard to concentrate on the meandering section that followed and quoted gossip and bird-borne rumors that Jamaillia City was raising a fleet to sail northward and inflict punishment on Bingtown for the kidnapping of the Satrap and the destruction of his tariff dock there. It was Faldin's studied opinion that the nobles of Jamaillia had long been seeking an excuse to plunder Bingtown. They seemed to have found it.

Kennit raised incredulous eyebrows at that tale. The Satrap had left Jamaillia, gone to Bingtown and been kidnapped there? The whole narrative seemed far-fetched. The meat of the rumor, of course, was that Jamaillia City was raising a retaliatory fleet. Purposeful warships passing through Pirate Isles waters were to be avoided. When they returned with the spoils of their war-making, however, they would be fat prey. His serpents would make such piracy near effortless.

The missive closed with another string of earnest compliments and good wishes, and rather unsubtle reminders that Kennit should be grateful to Sincure Faldin for sending him these tidings. At the bottom was an intricate signature done in two colors of ink, followed by a tasteless postscript exulting over how ripely Alyssum was swelling with Sorcor's seed.

Kennit set the scroll down on his desk and let the cursed thing roll itself up. Sorcor and the others gathered in his cabin stolidly waited to hear the news. The messenger had followed Faldin's explicit orders to deliver the message to Sorcor so that he could take it immediately to Captain Kennit, probably so Sorcor could admire his father-in-law's cleverness and loyalty.

Or was there more? Could either Sorcor or Sincure Faldin suspect what this news meant to Kennit? Had there been another message, for Sorcor's eyes only, in which Faldin bid him watch how his captain reacted? For an instant, doubt and suspicion gnawed at Kennit, but for an instant only. Sorcor could not read. If Faldin had wanted to rope his son-in-law into a plot against Kennit, he had chosen the wrong medium.