‘Sir, I—’

Her offended protest was cut short. Distant trumpets were sounding. Everyone froze, and then the meaning dawned on them.

‘The dragons are coming back!’ Lecter shouted. ‘Sestican! Sestican!’

‘Fente will want a hot soak and a grooming.’ Tats sounded almost apologetic.

‘As will Sintara.’ Thymara knew what it meant. Until the dragons were bathed and groomed, their lives would not be their own. And as Sintara did not enjoy the company of any of the other queens, chances were that she would not see Tats for that time. She felt a pang that surprised her. Had she so quickly become accustomed to spending her days with him? It had been simpler without Rapskal and her feelings for him complicating her life. And with that thought came another on its heels. She would have to deal once again with Rapskal and what he was becoming. A shiver of dread went through her. Each time she saw him, he was stranger. And more of a stranger.

‘Are you coming?’

The others, keepers and ship’s crew, had already begun hurrying back toward the Square of the Dragons. Tats had paused to wait for her. ‘I’m coming,’ she replied, and hurried to catch hands with him before they ran together.

By twos and threes, the dragons arrived. The boasting and trumpeting and the cries for attention from the keepers made it nearly impossible to get a coherent account of what had happened. Fente was disgusted that she had had to land in the river and walk about on the mud. She had made several kills on the journey home, all in the muddy margins of the river, and insisted that she was filthy even though, to Tats’s eyes, she was her green gleaming self.

Her account of how the dragons had flown into battle, cowing the evil humans into submission by virtue of their glittering beauty, seemed far-fetched to him. ‘So you captured them all without shedding a drop of blood?’ he asked as he inspected her claws after her long soak in the hot water.

She stretched her toes languorously. He found a bit of grit caught between two of them and diligently brushed it away.

Some died. One demanded to be eaten, so Spit ate him. Some jumped in the river and drowned. Some ran off in the forest, and so we left them. Then they had a fight amongst themselves on the way here, and some of them were injured. Stupid humans.

‘I see,’ Tats said quietly. ‘And Tintaglia, who you went to rescue?’

‘Dead by now. We were too late. All we could do was avenge her. Kalo remained behind with her, to eat her memories when she was gone.’

Tats looked away from her. Tears stung his eyes. So the first-born child of the King and Queen of the Elderlings must perish as well. ‘That will be hard for Malta to hear.’

‘She is deaf now?’ Fente asked, her curiosity idle. Tats shook his head and gave it up. From the way she dismissed the events, he knew there was no use in asking for details. She would be far more interested in telling him what she killed and exactly how it tasted than in explaining to him how a battle had been won and two ships captured.

Or so they claimed. Not all of the dragons had returned yet. Of the ships and Rapskal and Heeby there was no sign, nor of Kalo, Mercor and Baliper. They are coming, very slowly, Fente had explained to him. And then she demanded that he clean very carefully around her eyes, for she feared she had picked up water ticks from hunting in the river.

He had just finished that task when he heard more trumpeting from the river. The others have returned, she told him. He followed Fente out to the square where she launched into the air without a word of farewell. She was off to the hunt. She had no interest in ships or homecomings, not while her stomach was empty. He watched her depart and then followed the other keepers down toward the city docks.

That area had changed substantially since Tarman’s return. Leftrin and his crew had made a dozen small changes to Carson’s handiwork and had expanded it in other ways. Tarman was now tied securely within a slip, his lines run to stout shore anchors as well as to an anchor set in the river to keep him from being driven against the shore. It looked to Tats as if the ship could not possibly be torn free, but Leftrin insisted that two hands be aboard him at all times, and none of the crew seemed to think that odd.

When the dragons had arrived and told them that they could expect two more vessels to dock soon, the first reaction had been disbelief. It had been followed by activity that reminded Tats of a stirred-up wasps’ nest as keepers and crew frantically tried to make space for two more boats at their ramshackle dock while dealing with the demands of the dragons.

Mercor had been the first of the dragons to land. He came in gracefully, landing against the river’s current and sending a plume of water rooster-tailing behind him. He had calculated his speed precisely and emerged quickly from the water, to Sylve’s shouts of admiration.