‘Wouldn’t be only him and Heeby. Kalo’s hot to take vengeance on them. Fente wants to go, as do Baliper, Sestican and Dortean. Ranculos, too. And Tintaglia, of course. She says that once she’s fed up a bit, she’s taking her wrath to them.’

‘Mercor?’ she asked faintly. She suspected that if the golden went, all of the others would follow.

‘He’s keeping his own counsel, so far. I don’t know what he thinks. But Rapskal keeps stirring up the keepers. You know about that armoury they found?’

‘I do.’ Not even to Leftrin had she mentioned that she had discovered it a long time ago but never mentioned it to Rapskal. Her discovery of it had further changed her image of Elderlings. And dragons. The battle gear for the dragons had been mostly decorative, with rings where perhaps riders had once secured themselves. Sintara’s assertion that dragons had never been ridden by humans had seemed disproven to Alise, but the blue queen had insisted that carrying an Elderling into battle was not the same as being ridden like a donkey. The thought she had conveyed was that, in that instance, the dragon was using the Elderling as a sort of auxiliary weapon rather than serving him as a charger.

There had been armour for Elderlings hung neatly on hooks on the stone walls. It mimicked the scaling of dragons in how the fine plates overlapped one another as well as in colours. The wooden shafts of the spears were long gone, bows and quivers of arrows faint outlines of dust on the floor. But the arrow-points and spearheads had survived. There were other devices there, of green-coated brass and iron infused with Silver, ones she did not recognize even as she guessed their martial uses.

‘Those young men tried on that armour and helms like Jerd trying on jewellery,’ Leftrin complained. ‘They have no idea of what it means. But if Rapskal and Kalo and Tintaglia keep urging them on, I think they’ll soon find out.’

She shied away from thinking about it. ‘So. If you were choosing captains for those two ships, who would you train?’

‘Harrikin, I’m thinking. He’s steady. Maybe Alum. Lad seems capable and smart.’

She lowered her face to hide a grin at that. She suspected he could not imagine Skelly with a man who didn’t know how to run a boat. His next words surprised her. ‘But it might not be a keeper who steps up, you know. Dragons keep them pretty tied up. Could be Hennesey stepping up to take a command. Or Skelly, when she’s a bit more seasoned.’

‘So many changes,’ she mused. ‘There will have to be regular freight runs until Kelsingra can support itself. And after that, maybe we’ll be selling meat and grain to the Rain Wilds. New settlers coming to Kelsingra. They’ll have to understand what they’re risking, of course, but I think Tillamon is right. There will be people who are willing to come and start fresh here. And we’ll need what they know. Farmers and smiths, bakers and potters and carpenters … but they’ll come. It’s not often that people are offered the chance to just begin anew.’

‘Not often,’ he agreed. He was silent, mulling something. Then, ‘Be my wife,’ he said suddenly.

She stared at him, startled by the sudden change in topic. ‘I can’t, Leftrin. Until my marriage contract is formally annulled, I’m still marri—’

‘Don’t say you’re married to him! Please don’t. I hate to hear those words come from your mouth.’ He reached across the table and set his fingertips on her lips. He looked at her with earnest grey eyes. ‘I don’t care what they say in Bingtown or anywhere else in the world. He broke his contract a long time ago. He never even meant to honour it, so how could you ever have been his wife? Be mine, Alise. I’m already yours. I want to call myself your husband. Marry me here, in Kelsingra. Start a new life with me here. Forget Bingtown and its rules and contracts.’

She tilted her head. ‘You don’t want a marriage contract?’

‘I don’t need one. If you want one, you can draw up anything you want and I’ll sign it. I won’t bother reading it because anything you want to say about how it is going to be will be fine with me. I don’t need a paper or a contract or any of that. Just you.’

‘What brought all this on?’ Alise felt flustered.

He shook his head. ‘I knew Hest existed. I knew you’d been his. There were times when I felt like a thief. There was a day when Sedric took me on about it, saying that I was going to ruin your whole life by loving you. Made me feel selfish and low for wanting you.’

‘It seems a lifetime ago.’ She smiled at him. ‘We used to worry about such peculiar things.’