There was a wild part of her that insisted they were too far up this strange river, and that she did not need to worry about what might happen to her after she returned to Bingtown. That part believed that she might never return at all. And whether she died on this mad adventure or lived it out to the end, shouldn’t she live all of it, have all of it, instead of holding back from it? Coldly she realized that Sedric was not here to look at her with doleful accusing eyes. Her conscience was gone; she could do as she pleased.

‘It’s a lovelier day with you on the deck, my dear.’

She felt a warm rush of pleasure at hearing his voice and turned to find Leftrin bearing down on her. He carried two cups of tea. As she took the heavy, stained mug from his callused and scaled hand, she thought of how she might have flinched away from him only a month ago. She would have wondered if the mug were clean, and tsked over the stale tea. Now she knew that the mug had been given only a tiny swirl of water to clean it, or perhaps been wiped out with a rag. Knew and didn’t care. As for the tea, well… She toasted him with her mug. ‘Best tea to be had for miles around!’

‘It is that,’ he agreed. ‘And the best company to be had in the entire world, I’m thinking.’

She laughed softly and looked down at her hands. Her freckles were dark against her water-scalded skin. She didn’t want to think about her face and hair. She glanced at them in the small dim mirror in her cabin after she had brushed and pinned up her hair and given it up as hopeless. ‘How can you give me such outrageous compliments and not sound foolish doing it?’

‘Maybe you’re the right audience for such words. And maybe I don’t care if I sound foolish, for I know it’s the truth.’

‘Oh, Leftrin.’ She turned to look out over the river, resting her tea cup on the ship’s railing. ‘What are we going to do?’ She hadn’t known she was going to ask him that. The question came out of her as naturally as the steam that rose off her tea.

He purposely misunderstood her. ‘Well, Carson left before dawn. We’re going to hold in place here for a day. The dragons can rest a bit and gorge some more. A little bit upriver, they found an eddy full of acid-killed fish. So we’ll let them eat and rest while Carson continues the search. He’ll go another full day down the river. If he finds survivors, he’ll guide them back to us. If he finds nothing, he’ll give it up and come on back to us. He took the horn with him, and the sound carries quite a ways. I heard him blow three long blasts, not that long ago.’

‘I didn’t hear it.’

‘Well, it was faint, and I’m accustomed to listening for such things.’ Something in his tone rang oddly to her. She sensed a secret but was willing, for now, to let it go.

‘Do you think he’ll find anyone else?’

‘It’s impossible to predict a thing like that. But we found almost all our survivors in one place. So, it seems to me that what that river picked up in one place, it kept mostly together and dumped in another place.’

He stopped talking but she pieced his logic together. ‘So you think that if anyone survived to be found, they would have been with us.’

He nodded reluctantly. ‘Most likely. But we found that dragon off by herself.’

‘And Warken’s body.’

‘And the body,’ he agreed. ‘That says to me that most everything that was in our area when the wave hit was carried by the wash to this area.’

She was silent for a time. ‘Heeby and Rapskal? The copper dragon?’

‘Probably dead and on the bottom. Or buried under debris. Dead dragons that size wouldn’t be hard to spot.’

‘And Sedric?’

His silence was longer than hers had been. Finally he said, ‘Speaking bluntly, Alise, the keepers survived because they’re tough. Their skin can stand up to these waters. They all know how to climb a tree if they can get to one. They’re made for this life. Sedric wasn’t. There was no muscle to that man to begin with, and his long days of lying abed, sick or not, would only have weakened him more. I try to imagine him swimming in that wave, and I can’t. I fear he’s gone. It’s not your fault. I don’t think it’s my fault, either. I think it’s just what happened.’

Did he mention fault only because he secretly knew it was her fault? ‘I brought him into this, Leftrin. He wasn’t your idea of tough, I know. But in his own way, he was strong, capable and very competent. He was Hest’s right hand. I’ll never know why he decided to send him with me.’ Her words stuttered to a halt. Unless Hest had believed that she deserved the kind of watching over her that Sedric had tried to provide.

‘I wasn’t saying he wasn’t a good man, only that I doubted he was a good swimmer,’ Leftrin said gently. ‘And we don’t have to give up hope. We’ve got a strong man looking for him. I think Carson wants to find him as badly as you do.’

‘I’m grateful to him. I don’t know how to thank him for being so determined.’

Leftrin gave a small cough. ‘Well, I think he’s hoping that Sedric will do the thanking. Them being the same kind of men, and all.’

‘The same kind of men? I can’t think of two men more unlike.’

Leftrin shot her an odd look and then shrugged. ‘Like enough in the ways that matter to them, I’m thinking. But let’s let that go. It’s enough to say that Carson won’t give up easily.’

‘So why did you do it, then? If you didn’t think you were, well, in love with him?’

Jerd lifted one shoulder. ‘I guess that I’d decided I was going to live my own life just as soon as I left Trehaug. It was like keeping a promise to myself. And,’ she smiled wryly, ‘he was the first. It was flattering, I guess, that someone as soft-skinned as him would, well, want me. I don’t have to explain that to you. After a lifetime of being told that no one should touch you, that no one would or could touch you because you were born too much of a monster? Then a soft-skinned boy with a gentle manner doesn’t seem to think it matters that just made me feel free. So I decided to be free.’

‘So.’ Thymara swallowed and tried to think how to phrase her next question. She was the one who had sought Jerd out.

And she’d been surprised that the other girl hadn’t rebuffed her attempts at conversation. Neither of them had brought up Thymara’s spying on her and Greft. With a bit of luck, neither of them would. Perhaps Jerd was as uncomfortable about that as she was. She considered her question one last time. Did she really want to know?

‘So, then, he came to you. Not you to him.’

Jerd glanced across at her and made a disparaging face. ‘I followed him into the woods. Is that what you’re asking? Or are you asking who touched whom first? Because I’m not sure I remember’ She sat up straighter, put her hand on her slight belly and asked, ‘Why do you care, anyway?’

Thymara was suddenly sure that Jerd did remember, perfectly well. And she saw that she had just handed the other girl a little knife that she could use to dig at her any time she wanted, ‘I don’t know,’ she lied, ‘I just wondered.’

‘If you want him, you can have him,’ Jerd offered magnanimously, ‘I mean, I’ve got Greft, you know. And it isn’t like I wanted Tats permanently. I wouldn’t take him away from you.’

So she thought she could. Could she? ‘And you didn’t want Rapskal permanently?’ Thymara countered. ‘Nor any of them?’

If she’d thought to pierce the other girl, she’d missed. Jerd gave a laugh. ‘No, not Rapskal! Though he was sweet, so boyish and so handsome. But once with him was enough for me! He laughed in such a silly way; very annoying. Oh! I’m sorry he’s gone, though. I know you were close, and I’m sure you didn’t find his silly ways annoying at all. It must be very hard for you to lose him.’

The bitch. Thymara willed her throat not to close, her eyes not to tear, and failed. It wasn’t that she’d been in love with him. As Jerd had said, he was just too strange. But he’d been Rapskal and her friend; his absence left a hole in her life.