‘I don’t understand.’ Thymara kept her words as soft and neutral as she could. ‘Silver? A treasure of some kind?’

‘Neither do I understand!’ In a fury, the dragon erupted fully from the sand-pit. ‘It’s not a treasure, not as humans think of such. Not metal made into little rounds to trade for food, nor decorations for the body. It’s the Silver, precious to dragons. It’s here. It was here, first in the river near this city, and then, when the Elderlings lived, here in the city, somewhere. Everything else we can find here. All the pleasures we recalled from Kelsingra are here – the hot-water baths, the winter shelters, the sand-grooming places, everything else we recall so clearly is here. So the Silver should be here too. Somewhere. But not one of us can find it. There were places in the city where the Elderlings helped us get the Silver. None of us recall them clearly. All of us find that strange, as if a memory has been deliberately withheld from us.’ Sintara lashed her tail in frustration. ‘One place, we think, is gone with the collapsing street along the riverside. Another may be where the earth split open and the river flowed in. Gone and lost. Baliper tried to dive for it there, but that chasm is deep and the water got colder the deeper he went. There is no Silver there for us.

‘There were other places. We think. But those memories are lost to us, lost since we hatched, along with all manner of information we cannot even guess at. We will not be full dragons, nor you real Elderlings, until we can find the Silver wells. But you refuse to remember! No Elderling dreams of the wells. And try as I may, I cannot even make you dream of a Silver well!’

With these words, she had given a final shudder and a lash of her tail. Thymara leapt back and watched her wade out of the sand-pit and then stalk out of the doors that opened for her and then closed behind her, leaving Thymara staring after her.

Thymara had pondered the dragon’s words in the days that followed. Sintara had spoken true. She had often encountered a dragon wandering the streets, snuffing and searching. Her curiosity was piqued. She had asked Alise if she knew of any Silver wells in Kelsingra, but Alise had only looked puzzled. ‘There is a fountain called Golden Dragon Fountain. I read of that, once, in a very old manuscript. But if it remains intact, I haven’t found it yet.’ She had smiled and then commented as if vaguely amused, ‘But I dreamed a few nights ago that I was looking for a silver well. Such an odd dream.’ She had cocked her head and furrowed her brow with the faraway look of someone who tinkers with the threads of a mystery. A strange thrill ran through Thymara. It was the same look Alise had worn so often earlier in the expedition, when she had been putting pieces together to understand something about Elderlings or dragons. She had not seen it on her face for some time.

Alise mused aloud, ‘There are odd mentions in some of the old manuscripts, things I was never able to make sense of. Hints that there was a special reason for Kelsingra to exist, something secret, something to guard …’ A slow look of wonder had dawned on her face. She spoke more to herself than to Thymara as she muttered, ‘Not so useless, perhaps. Not if I can ferret out what they mean.’

Alise’s look had gone distant. Thymara had known that any further conversation with her that day would consist of her own questions and the Bingtown woman’s distracted replies. She had thanked her, decided she had delivered the mystery to someone better suited to handle it, and put silver wells out of her mind.

But Sintara’s remark about dependence she did not forget. She watched the other dragons grow and yes, change, some becoming more affable and others more arrogant as they gained independence of their keepers. It was odd to watch the ties between them loosen. Different keepers adapted to the dragons’ dwindling interest in them in various ways. Some relished having leisure time and a beautiful city to explore. Suddenly the keepers could put their own well-being first. They made their first priority comfortable lodging. Although the city offered a vast array of empty dwellings, Thymara was amused that she and her fellows ended up in three buildings that fronted onto what they had begun to call the Square of the Dragons, after a very large sculpture in the middle of it. They could have moved into what Alise called villas or mansions, structures that were larger than the Traders’ Concourse back in Trehaug. Instead, most of them had chosen the smaller, simpler quarters above the dragon baths, housing obviously designed for those who tended dragons. It was wonder enough to Thymara to have as her own room a chamber twice as large as her family home had been. It was wealth to possess a bed that softened under her, a large mirror, drawers and shelves of her own. She could soak in a steaming bath as often as she wished and then retire to a room so comfortably warm that she needed no blankets or garments at all. She had time to study herself in the mirror, time to braid and pin up her hair, time to wonder who and what she was becoming.