Knowing it was ridiculous, a mercy performed too late, she gathered his unwashed garments and carefully folded them, setting some aside to launder. She shook out his bedding and re-made his pallet. A promise to herself—a foolish promise—that he would return and be relieved to find a tidy room waiting for him. She took up the bundle he had been using for a pillow and shook it to fluff it.

As she did so, something fell to the floor. She stooped in the darkness and groped until her fingers found a fine chain. She lifted it and held it to the light. A locket swung from it. It gleamed gold and flashed even in the dim light. She had never seen Sedric wear it, and the moment it had tumbled from its hiding place in his pillow, she knew it was something private. She smiled even as her heart ached. She’d never suspected that he had a sweetheart, let alone that she’d gifted him with a locket. With a sudden wrench, she understood his reluctance to be stolen away from Bingtown, and his agony over being gone so long. Why hadn’t he told her? He could have confided in her, and then she would have understood his driving need to return. His melancholy of the last week suddenly shone in a different light. He was heartsick. With her free hand, she caught the locket as it swung.

She had not intended to open it. She was not the sort of woman who pried and spied. But as her hand closed on the locket, the catch sprung and it opened in her hand. With an exclamation of dismay, she saw that a lock of gleaming black hair was now escaping from its golden prison. She opened the locket the rest of the way to tuck it back in, and then stopped. Gazing up at her from the locket’s confines were features that she recognized. Whoever had painted the miniature had known him well, to catch his face at just that moment before he burst into laughter. His green eyes were narrowed, his finely chiseled lips pulled tight enough to partially bare his white teeth. The painting was the work of a skilled artist. She looked down at Hest smiling up at her. What did it mean? What could it mean?

She sank down slowly to sit on Sedric’s bed. With trembling fingers, she poked the curl of black hair, tied with a single golden thread, back into the locket. It took her three tries before it would stay snapped shut. And when it was closed, the mystery only enlarged. For engraved on the outside of the golden clam-shell was a single word. “Always,” she whispered to herself.

She sat for a long time as the afternoon sunlight outside the small window slowly died. There could be but one explanation. Hest had had the locket made and entrusted it to Sedric to give to her. Why had he done such a thing?

Always. What did that word mean to her, coming from Hest? Had he feared to lose her? Did he actually care for her, in some thwarted bizarre way that he could not confess to her face? Was that what this locket was supposed to tell her? Or had it been intended as a threat, that “Always” he would keep a hold on her? No matter where she went, no matter how far, or how long she stayed away, Hest held her leash. Always. Always. She looked at the locket in the palm of her hand. Carefully, she lifted the chain and puddled it in a golden coil around the closed locket. She shut her fist around it, thrust her hand inside Sedric’s pillow and dropped it. Carefully, she set the pillow down on his pallet.

Her eyes roved around the small place where she had kenneled Sedric. Dim and small and crowded. Untidy. Completely unlike his personal chambers at their home in Bingtown. He loved high ceilings and tall windows open to the breeze. His desk and shelves were always a model of organization. Hest’s servants knew to stock his room daily with fresh flowers, that he loved fragrant applewood burning in his small fireplace and hot tea served on an enameled tray. Scented candles in the evening and mulled wine. And from all that, she had snatched him away and condemned him to this. “Sedric, I will make it up to you. I promise. Just be alive. Just be where we can find you. My friend, I’ve treated you badly, but I swear it was not with intent. I swear.”

She stood on her tiptoes to open the small windows to the evening breeze. As soon as they had water for washing, she’d see that his clothes were laundered and hung fresh in his wardrobe. It was all she could do. She refused to consider the futility of promises made to a dead man. He had to be alive and he had to be found. That was all there was to it.

“THAT’S SIMPLY NOT POSSIBLE.” Thymara spoke firmly.

“We are not asking you,” Sintara rejoined. “It’s his right.”

“We do not eat our dead,” Tats said stiffly.

Evening had fallen, and much to the relief of everyone the river had finally subsided to an almost normal level. The dragons were still belly-deep in water, but now they had river bottom to stand on, even if it was thick with a fresh coat of silt and muck. The crew had moved the barge to an anchoring spot that was close to the dragons without threatening the barge with getting stranded. Every keeper had had a hot meal, even if it had been a small one.