“Then why did you do it? Why?” Tears were running down her face. Their voices had carried. She heard keeper voices lifted querulously, heard the rumble of dragons. She didn’t care, didn’t care if the others were watching from the deck of the Tarman, didn’t care if the other dragons were disturbed and drawing near to see what the fuss was. This was between her and Sintara, and she intended to have it out, once and for all.

“You began changing yourself! You dreamed of flying more than I did! I was not even thinking of changing you. When Mercor pointed out to me that you were changing, I took pity on you. That’s all. You should be grateful! They will be quite beautiful when they are finished, almost a mirror to my own. And I, I will have the first winged Elderling! No other dragon has ever created such a creature.”

Thymara craned her neck to try to look over her shoulder. The dragon sounded so pleased with herself. Were the wings actually beautiful? Should she feel herself honored rather than made monstrous? No matter how she twisted her head, all she could see was the wet tip of something that reminded her of a rain-soaked parasol. Timidly she reached back with both hands. Wings. She felt skin stretched over bone and cartilage, but strangest of all, when she touched them, she felt herself, just as she did when she touched her own hands.

She dared herself, took hold of them, and tried to stretch them out. No. No, that was like bending her fingers the wrong way. She twitched a shoulder and instinctively folded her wings back in tight to her back. Tight to her back, yes, but not concealed as they had been. Folded smooth to her body, even as Sintara’s wings or a bird’s wings fit flush to her back. “Will they…will they grow more?” She dared herself and then asked boldly, “Will I be able to fly some day?”

“Fly? Don’t be ridiculous. No. They’re much too small. But they will be lovely, as lovely as mine. All will envy you.”

“Why can’t they grow larger? Why couldn’t they grow large enough for me to fly? I want to fly!”

“Why are you daring to ask for more than you’ve been given?” The dragon had gone from being bemused at what she had created to being angry again. Thymara thought that perhaps the truth slipped out when Sintara demanded, “Why do you think you should be able to fly when I cannot?”

“Perhaps because it would only make sense to me that any changes you made in me would be useful to me!”

“You will be pretty! And interesting to other dragons. And that is enough for any Elderling, let alone a human!”

“Perhaps ‘pretty’ wings are enough for you, but if I must bear their weight and the inconvenience of having something growing out of my backbone, perhaps they should be useful. I have never understood why you don’t even try to use your wings. I see the other dragons stretching and working theirs. I’ve seen the silver almost lift himself from the water with his, and he began with a much more ungainly body and smaller wings than yours! You don’t try! I groom your wings and keep them clean. They’ve grown larger and stronger and you could try, but you don’t. All you do is tell me how lovely they are. And lovely they may be, but have you never considered trying to use them for what they are intended?”

She could see the dragon’s fury build. She’d dared to criticize her, and Sintara could not tolerate even the implication that she was lazy or self-pitying or perhaps even just a bit…“Stupid.”

Thymara said the word aloud. She had no idea what prompted her to do it. Perhaps simply to show Sintara that she’d gone too far and that her keeper would no longer be terrorized by her. How dare she put wings on her back when she could not even master the ones that had grown naturally on her own?

The murmur of voices from the barge was growing louder. Thymara refused even to glance in that direction. She stood, her bunched shirt clutched over her breasts, and faced the furiously spinning eyes of her dragon. Sintara was magnificent in her wrath. She lifted her head and opened her jaws wide, displaying the brightly colored poison sacs in her throat. She opened her wings wide, a reflexive display of size that the dragons often used in an attempt to remind one another of their relative sizes and strengths, and they spread like magnificent stained-glass panels unfolding. For a moment, Thymara was dizzied by her glory and her glamour. She nearly fell to her knees before her dragon.

Then she took a grip on herself and stood up to the blast of pure charisma that Sintara was radiating at her. “Yes. They are beautiful!” she shouted. “Beautiful and useless! As you are beautiful and useless!” A shudder passed over Thymara. She felt suddenly queasy and then realized what she had done. In a bizarre reaction to Sintara’s display, Thymara had spread her own wings. There were shouts of amazement from the keepers on the boat.