Sedric had been staring at the firepot as Carson spoke. Now he glanced at him surreptitiously. For the first time he saw the animation in his face. His deep-set brown eyes shone, and his lips, nestled in his beard, curved in a smile of purest satisfaction. Sedric had never heard anyone so pleased over such an intangible thing. He’d seen Hest in a paroxysm of joy over closing a rich deal, and he’d witnessed his father drunkenly celebrating a partnership in a trading trip. Always it had been about the wealth, the money, and the power and status that went with it. That had been the measure of the man, the status of the Trader in Bingtown. And it was how a man was measured in every town in Chalced and in Jamaillia and every other civilized place he’d ever visited. So he watched Carson and waited for the quirk of the lips or the bitter laugh that would expose his mockery of himself.

It didn’t come. And although he’d said he’d come along for the same reason as Leftrin, he hadn’t mentioned the taking of dragon parts and the riches to be made from them.

“It sounds like the stuff of dreams,” he said, mostly to fill in the gap in the conversation, but wondering if it might provoke the man to confide the larger plan to him. Before he went back to the Tarman, he needed to know how ruthless Captain Leftrin was. Was Alise in physical danger from the man?

“I suppose. Every man has a dream. But I’m not telling you anything. You and Alise, documenting the dragons and ferreting out what they can recall of the Elderlings. It’s the same thing, exploring territory where no one has gone, at least not in a long time.”

“There will be money to be made from this,” Sedric ventured.

Carson did laugh then. “Maybe. I rather doubt it. If it comes about, it will likely be after I’m in my grave. Oh, some of the keepers see it that way.” Carson smiled as he shook his head. “Greft’s full of himself; he’s going to be the founder of a new Rain Wild settlement, the keepers will claim the wealth of Kelsingra as their own, and the dragons will help them defend their claim. The ships and workers will come up the river, there will be trade, and he’ll be a rich man.”

“Greft says that?” Sedric was shocked. He respected Greft’s intelligence, but the young man had always seemed to be too full of hostility to have grandiose plans for himself.

“Not to me, of course. But he whispers it to the other keepers, as if such talk would stay in one place. I suspect a lot of his notions came from Jess. Jess is fond of claiming to be both worldly wise and well educated. By which I think he means that he once read a book. He has filled that boy’s head with all sorts of nonsense.” Carson leaned over and snapped a snag off a piece of the floating pack. The way he broke it spoke of extreme annoyance.

When he spoke again, he sounded calmer. “Oh, it may happen that Kelsingra is found and we establish a settlement there, but not the way he visualizes it. For one thing, he hasn’t got enough people, and too few of them are female. He’s barely got the population to start a village, let alone a city. And Rain Wilders, as I’m sure you know, don’t breed easily. The babies who manage to be born sometimes live less than a year. And a Rain Wilder is an old man at forty.” Carson scratched his scaly cheek above his beard. “So, even if a big discovery does persuade a boatload of new settlers to come, the new will likely outnumber the old, and they’ll have their say about how things are done. And while Greft and the other keepers may discover riches, well, you can’t eat Elderling artifacts. Don’t we all know that! As long as the Elderling treasures remained in the Rain Wilds, it did no one any good. We had to ship them out to where people could come to bargain for them. That’s why Bingtown is the big trading town and Trehaug isn’t; if we didn’t trade, we’d starve. And if we do find Kelsingra, and there is treasure there, the Traders driving the deals for those things will know that better than anyone. Men experienced at squeezing every bit of fat out of a deal will come. King Greft would have to sit at their bargaining table and play by their rules. Still. By the time Davvie’s a full man, there might be a future for him in Kelsingra.”

He cleared his throat and poked another dry stick into his firepot. Sedric was silent, picturing Greft or any of the keepers at a trading table with Hest. He’d eat them alive and pick his teeth with their bones.

A fat silver fish leaped suddenly out of the water after a low buzzing insect. It fell back into its world with a splash, and Carson laughed aloud. “Listen to me, spinning dreams and tales as if I were a minstrel. If anything of Kelsingra remains, and if we find it…”