“And when the Jamaillian fleet arrives here, what then?” he demanded. “The birds that were sent out to Jamaillia primed them to expect Old Trader treachery against the Satrap. Lo and behold, we were more right than we knew! Your Bingtown Trader friends were the ones who sent the Satrap to his death.”

Her voice was cold. “You are so bold, you admit your part in the plot against Satrap Cosgo, and then threaten me with the consequences?” She shook her head in patrician disbelief. “If Jamaillia were going to muster a fleet against us, it would have done so by now. Unless I am much mistaken, those who hoped to sail north and plunder Bingtown have found they must stay at home to protect what they have. If this threatened Jamaillian fleet ever arrives, I doubt there will be much to it. I assure you, I am all too familiar with the financial state of the Jamaillian treasury. The death of a Satrap and the threat of civil war will prompt most nobles to keep their wealth and their strength close to home. I know what the conspiracy hoped. You believed your Jamaillian partners would arrive with ships and turn Bingtown over to you. Doubtless you thought it wise to have this fallback defense against the Chalcedeans in case they became too greedy. As they did, and far sooner than you expected.”

She gave a small sigh and poured herself more tea. With a social smile, she waved the pot questioningly toward Mingsley’s cup, then interpreted his outraged silence as a refusal. She took up her lecture again. “If this fleet ever arrives here, they will be greeted with diplomacy, a cordial welcome and a well-fortified harbor. They will find a city rebuilding itself after an unjustified Chalcedean attack. I suggest you consider the New Traders’ position in Bingtown from an entirely different angle. Whatever will you do if the Satrap is not dead? For if the dragon speaks truth when she says that Malta Vestrit lives, then perhaps the Satrap has survived alongside her. How uncomfortable could that be for you? Especially as I have it, in your own hand, that there was a New Trader plot against him. Not that you were personally involved, of course.” She idly stirred a bit of honey into the mint tea. “In any case, if the fleet is met, not with a show offeree, nor a scene of civil disorder, but with a courteous and diplomatic welcome… Well.”

She cocked her head at him and smiled winningly. “We shall see. Oh. Did I caution you to remember that this Jamaillian fleet must first come here through not only the Pirate Isles, but through the Chalcedean ‘patrol’ vessels? It will, I think, be rather like coming past an enraged hive of bees. If and when the fleet reaches us, they may be glad of a peaceful harbor and a dragon guardian.” She stirred her tea again as she idly asked, “Or had you forgotten about Tintaglia?”

“You will regret this!” Mingsley told her. He stood with a fine crash of china and cutlery. “You would have been carried alongside us to power! You could have returned to Jamaillia a wealthy woman, and lived out your days in civilization and culture. Instead you have doomed yourself to this backwater town and its rustic folk. They have no respect for the Satrapy here. Here you will be nothing more than just another woman on her own!”

He stormed from the room, slamming the door behind him. Just another woman on her own. Mingsley was not to know that he had flung a blessing at Serilla in the tones of a curse.

KENDRY CAME BACK TO HARBOR UNDER SAIL, A DIMINISHED CREW WORKING HIS decks, but making good time nonetheless. Reyn Khuprus sat on the skeletal rooftop of a half-destroyed warehouse and watched him come. Overhead, Tintaglia circled once, flashing silver. The dragon touched Reyn’s mind briefly as she passed overhead. “Ophelia is your name for her. She comes, also.”

He watched Kendry as the men brought him alongside one of the shattered docks and tied him off. The liveship had changed. The affable boyish figurehead did not wave his arms in greeting, or clap and whoop with joy at his safe return. Instead his arms were crossed on his chest and his face was closed. Reyn could guess what had happened. Tintaglia had told Kendry who and what he truly was. The last few times he’d sailed on the Kendry, he had been uncomfortably aware of the dragon lurking below the ship’s surface personality. Now those memories would have bloomed in full.

A slow and terrible knowledge rose in Reyn. He was doomed to see this change in every liveship. With each stricken or closed face, he would have to confront what his ancestors had done. Knowingly or not, they had taken the dragons’ lives from them, and then condemned their spirits to a sexless, wingless eternity as ships. He should have been happy to know that the liveship Ophelia had prevailed in her encounters with the Chalcedeans. Instead, he did not want to be there when Grag Tenira went down to greet the ship he had loved all his life, and encountered a glowering dragon instead. It was not only dragonkind he had injured; soon he would see in his friend’s eyes the damage done to Bingtown’s liveship families.