She smiled and shook her head at him. ‘You make no sense. And yet you do. Selden Vestrit fostered by Khuprus, you are the first man I’ve ever talked with. Do you know that?’

With difficulty, he tugged a cushion closer. ‘That doesn’t seem possible. You had brothers, you told me. Your father. Three husbands. You must have known other men.’

She shook her head. ‘My status meant that males were kept at a distance from the time I was a child. I sat at dinners, there were polite exchanges. My suitors courted my father, not me. And when I was given over to my husbands, they had no interest in conversing with me. I was not even an object for pleasure; they had much more skilled women at their disposal for that. I was for making a child that would mingle my lineage with theirs. That was all.’

‘And they all died.’

She had mentioned some of her history to him, but he had never prodded at what she had told him. She met his gaze. ‘The first one died accidentally,’ she said. She poured wine for both of them, and then lifted the lid off a fat bowl. The aroma of a rich beef soup rose from it. She ladled out servings for each of them. ‘Do you think I am hateful?’ she asked him.

‘You have not seemed so to me,’ he replied. ‘There were nights when I dreamed of killing my captors. Times when I lunged against my chains and would have done death on any of the gawkers that I could have reached. So what is the difference between us?’

She smiled at him. ‘That I was more efficient than you were?’ she offered. She lifted a fold of cloth to reveal a warm loaf. When she uncovered the little dish next to it, she said, ‘Look how yellow the butter is! They must have put the cows out onto new pasture.’

Trumpets sounded again, more urgently. They both turned to look out over the city. In the distance, other horns blared a response. Selden turned his head sharply. ‘What is that?’ he asked her.

She shrugged. ‘A diplomatic visit, most likely. The guards at the city gate will blow an alarm that announces the arrival. Then the horns sound again as the visitors pass each checkpoint in the city.’ She sipped her wine. ‘It is nothing to do with us, my friend.’

The winds had favoured them. Sintara knew that Tintaglia had not expected to arrive at the city before noon. They had come from the direction of the dry lands, and as they came to gentler territory, more than one herd had scattered in terror as they overflew them. One shepherd had dared to shout and shake his fist at them. The herdsmen they saw spurred their horses and fled, leaving their cattle to fend for themselves.

We will feast later! IceFyre promised them.

For now, fly steady and strong. We want no warning of our coming to precede us, Mercor reminded them all.

That had all been settled back in Kelsingra. IceFyre had battled humans before, and had very definite ideas of how they must proceed. There would be no trumpeting to one another, and the path that they had followed to Chalced had taken them over the deserted lands, away from eyes that might send messengers ahead to the city. Men on horses, dragons had learned long ago, could not outrun a dragon, but they could and would continue to travel by night, with no need to kill and eat and sleep. The old black dragon had been very intent on surprising Chalced, and attacking them with as little warning or challenge as they had given him.

So now they flew, swift and straight, making no kills, regardless of how easy the prey that was offered. The scattered huts and farmhouses grew more common, and soon they were flying over the outskirts of the great city. Ahead of them loomed the city walls, and high above it, on a hill within the fortified city, stood the towers and ramparts of the Duke of Chalced’s stronghold. It was more fortress than palace, and as they approached it, Sintara knew a moment of unsettling doubt. This was a bad place, a very bad place, and her inability to summon up the specific memory that told her that only made it appear more ominous. IceFyre had been insistent that the entire city must be completely annihilated. That was the only point on which Mercor had directly opposed him.

‘My memories may not be as extensive as yours, but this I do recall. Stirring an entire city of humans is like lying down to sleep on a hill of dagger ants. They are tiny, but they will attack endlessly, summoning their fellows from other hills if they must. To be rid of them, you have only to kill the queen in the central mound. Tintaglia has spoken of being well treated by the folk that live in the Icy Islands, and along the Black Stone Coast. The Six Duchies, she called it, and said that whenever she visited there, she was offered gifts of fattened cattle and a safe place to sleep. Will destroying Chalced threaten that?’