If he chose that path, he need do no more than find a way to get the ponderously heavy log intact to Chalced. Surely the remains of the half-formed dragon inside it would fetch an amazing price there. Just get the cocoon to Chalced. If he said it quickly, it almost sounded simple, as if it would not involve hoists and pulleys just to move it from where it was wedged and load it on his barge. To say nothing of keeping such a cargo secret, and also arranging secret transport from the mouth of the Rain Wild River north to Chalced. His river barge could never make such a trip. But if he could arrange it, and if he was neither robbed nor murdered on the trip north or on his way home, then he could emerge from his adventure as a very wealthy man.

He limped faster. The stinging inside his boot had become a burning. A few blisters he could live with; an open wound would quickly ulcerate and hobble him for weeks.

As he emerged from the undergrowth into the relatively open space alongside the river, he smelled the smoke of the galley stove, and heard the voices of his crew. He could smell flatcakes cooking and coffee brewing. Time to be aboard and away before any of them wondered what their captain had been up to on his morning stroll. Some thoughtful soul had tossed a rope ladder down the bow for him. Probably Swarge. The tillerman always was two thoughts ahead of the rest of the crew. On the bow, silent, hulking Eider was perched on the railing, smoking his morning pipe. He nodded to his captain and blew a smoke ring by way of greeting. If he was curious as to where Leftrin had been or why, he gave no sign of it.

Leftrin was still pondering the best way to convert the wizardwood log into wealth as he set his muddy foot on the first rung of the ladder. The painted gaze of Tarman's gleaming black eyes met his own, and he froze. A radical new thought was born in his mind. Keep it. Keep it, and use it for myself and my ship. For several long moments, as he paused on the ladder, the possibilities unfolded in his mind like flowers opening to the early dawn light.

He patted the side of his barge. 'I might, old man. I just might.' Then he climbed the rest of the way up to his deck, pulled off his leaking boot and flung it back into the river for it to devour.

Day the 15th of the Fish Moon

Year the 7th of the Reign of the Most Noble and Magnificent

Satrap Cosgo

Year the. 1st of the Independent Alliance of Traders

From Detozi, Keeper of the Birds, Trehaug to Erek, Keeper of the Birds, Bingtown

Within the sealed scroll, a message of Great Importance from the Rain Wild Traders' Council at Trehaug to the Bingtown Traders' Council. You are invited to send whatever representatives you wish to he present on the occasion of the Rain Wild Dragons emerging from their cases. At the direction of the most exalted and queenly Dragon Tintaglia, the cases will be exposed to sun fight on the 15th day of the Greening Moon, forty-five days hence. The Rain Wild Traders' Council looks forward with pleasure to your attendance as our dragons emerge.

Erek!

Clean your nesting boxes and paint the walls of your coop with fresh limewash. The fast two birds I received from you were infested with lice and spread it to one of my coops. Detozi

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.