‘No, no, of course she doesn’t! Who could blame her? But, but, she’d let me ride on her back? I could fly on a dragon’s back?’

‘Yes, fly you to Kelsingra. And then you could see it all yourself and write it down as much as you want. I’m going to go down there now, with my friends. If you don’t mind, please, ma’am.’

‘Oh, of course I don’t mind. Thank you, Rapskal. Thank you so much.’

‘You’re welcome, ma’am, I’m sure.’

Then, as if fearing the she would delay him again, he spun and ran. She watched him go, watched his long red-scaled legs flash in the sunlight. His clothing looked ridiculous on him now; the ragged trousers were too short for his Elderling legs and the tattered shirt that had long ago lost its buttons flapped as he ran. His stride ate up the distance and he shouted to his friends as he went. They turned and called to him in return, motioning to him to hurry and join them.

‘Well, he has changed.’ Leftrin observed, watching Rapskal run down the grassy hillside towards the river.

‘Not as much as you might think,’ Alise replied as she turned to him. She was smiling, unaware of the ink smear by the side of her nose. He went to her, turned her face up to his and kissed her, and then tried to thumb the smear away but only succeeded in spreading it across her cheek. He laughed and showed her his inky thumb.

‘Oh, no!’ she cried, and pulled a tattered kerchief from her pocket. She dabbed at her face, is it gone now?’

‘Most of it,’ he told her, taking her hand. Still such a fine lady she was, to worry about something as trivial as a bit of ink smeared on her face. He loved it. ‘I see you’ve added some more pages to your stack. Did you get his entire story, then?’

‘I got a summary of what happened to him, and how they found us again.’ She smiled and shook her head in wonder. ‘These youngsters take so much in their stride. He sees nothing extraordinary in that he found a place where sheep or goats were running wild, near what had to have been an ancient Elderling dwelling. He doesn’t even consider what it means that he found land, dry land suitable for pasturing livestock, right there on the Rain Wild River. Do you know what that would mean to Trehaug or Cassarick? The possibility of raising meat! Perhaps even sheep for wool. And he shrugs it off as an interesting spot with a “keep-warm” place for his dragon.’

‘Well. I’ll agree that is a big discovery, one that is likely to remain undiscovered again for almost as long as it has been.’

‘Not when the dragons start flying,’ she said, and then, to his shock, sprang at him and trapped him in a hug. ‘Leftrin, you’ll never guess what Rapskal told me! He said he’d ask Heeby to carry me across to the main part of Kelsingra, so I can walk the streets there as long as I want!’

He felt almost hurt at her excitement. ‘But I told you I’d get you there! There’s just no safe place for Tarman to put in along the bank right now. But maybe tomorrow, the barge could take us most of the way across, and then we could cover the rest of the distance in a small boat. And Tarman could come fetch us back in the afternoon. There’s just no way for him to stay there. Water’s too deep for the poles, and while he can move the barge against a slow current in shallow water, deep swift water is too hard for him.’

‘Tomorrow! We could do that tomorrow? Together?’

Had she heard a word he’d said? ‘Yes, my dear. Of course we could. It’s only the barge that can’t safely put in on that shore. And in the future, when the docks there are restored, that won’t be a problem.’

She looked down at her remaining sheets of paper, and then fool I was! I documented every little thing all along the way, and now that we are here, on the outskirts of a major intact Elderling city, I’m down to a few sheets of paper and a few drops of ink!’

He shook his head at her fondly. ‘Well, when we get back to Trehaug, I shall have to buy you a crate of paper, and a hogshead of ink.’ He reached over and playfully twitched the abused handkerchief from her fingertips. ‘And perhaps a few of these, too.’

‘What?’ She asked him. All life, all merriment faded suddenly from her face. ‘Trehaug? Go back to Trehaug?’

He cocked his head at her. ‘Well, I think we’ll have to before winter, or we’re going to have keepers running around here in the cold in next to nothing. And while meat and fish and wild greens are fine things, I for one am starting to miss even such bread as ship’s biscuit. And a dozen other things we’ve been doing without.’ He grinned at the prospect.

She just stared at him. ‘Go back to Trehaug?’

‘Well, of course. You must have known that we’d have to go back eventually.’

‘I well, no. I hadn’t thought about it. I never want to go back, not to Trehaug, not to Bingtown.’

He looked at the distress in her face and then carefully folded her into his arms. ‘Alise, Alise. You don’t think I’d let you get away from me? Yes, we’ll go back to Trehaug. We’ll go back together, just as we came here. Tarman will show you what he can do, downriver in the current, when we know where we’re going, without a herd of slogging dragons setting the pace for us. We’ll go down to Cassarick, and put in our order for provisions. You’ll report to the Council there, and I’ll collect my money. Yes, and you’ll report to Malta the Elderling, too.’

She was looking up at him and the life had come back to her face. Her eyes had begun to shine. He had to continue the tale for her.

‘And then we’ll go down to Trehaug, pick up our cargo and be back here before the worst of winter, with blankets and knives and tea and coffee and bread and whatnot. Now I’ve never so much as seen a herd of sheep or an apple tree, but from what I’ve heard tell, I think they’d go here. So we’ll make that an order, too, and next spring, we’ll make another run, and we’ll pick up whatever it was we sent for. Seeds and animals and such things from Bingtown and beyond. Look around us, Alise. You see that old city over there, and it’s a very fine thing, I’m sure. But I see the one thing that the Rain Wilds have never had, and that’s arable land. What if, after all these generations, the Rain Wilders could feed themselves without having to dig for Elderling artefacts to do it?

‘We’re going to change everything, Alise. Everything.’

Copper and silver they gleamed, side by side on the sandy riverbank. They were both stretched out in utter repose. Sedric’s back ached and his hands felt raw from the scrubbing, but Relpda shimmered as if she were a newly-minted coin. She was growing again, he was sure of it. Both her neck and tail seemed longer and more graceful and her wings were getting stronger all the time. Beside her, Spit’s ribs rose and fell in the slow cadence of deep sleep. He glanced up at Heeby’s distant circling silhouette just in time to see the red dragon clap her wings tight to her body and dive on something; he knew a moment of purest jealousy. Then he looked at Relpda and it all ebbed away. In time. Soon enough, the sun would catch on her copper wings in flight. For now, the deep sleep of her repose was satisfaction enough for him.

‘I’ve never seen anything as beautiful as she is when she’s clean. Nothing gleams like she does.’

Sedric was perched on the riverbank. A short distance away from him at the water’s edge, Carson straightened slowly, shaking water from his hands and arms. Both men had spent most of the afternoon grooming their dragons. Carson had gone hunting in the dawn and brought back a deer. The dragons had not been happy about having to share a kill, but he’d insisted. In the process of eating it, they’d managed to get blood all over themselves, and Sedric had insisted it was time they both had a good grooming. That task finished, Carson had discarded his shirt while he’d sluiced his hands and arms in the river.