Only at Malta’s request had all the dragons gathered to hear what the Council proposed. The Council had seemed to think that if they spoke to the largest dragon and gained his assent, they would have a binding agreement. Malta had laughed aloud at that and insisted that all be summoned. Then the head of the Council, a thin man with so little meat to his bones that he wouldn’t have been worth the trouble of eating, spoke for a long time. Many unctuous words and promises he uttered, saying that the Council was troubled by the poor conditions the dragons were enduring, and that they hoped to help them return to their former homeland.

Mercor had assured them that they knew the humans were doing their best, and that dragons had no “homeland” but were in their rightful forms Lords of the Three Realms of earth, sea, and sky. He had blandly pretended not to understand the broad hints the Council leader dropped, until finally Malta cut through his foolishness to say bluntly, “They think you can lead them to Kelsingra and that they will find vast treasure there. They seek to persuade you to leave here and go in search of that fabled city. But I, who love all of you, fear that they are merely sending you off to your deaths. You must tell them no.”

But Mercor had not heeded her advice. Instead he had said sadly, “Such a journey would be an impossible undertaking. We would starve long before we led you to Kelsingra. Every one of us is willing to undertake such a journey. But there are among us some who are small and weak. We would need hunters to feed them, and attendants to groom us and tend us as the Elderlings used to do. No. I fear it would be impossible. I need not say no because yes would be meaningless.”

Then despite Malta’s interruptions and pleadings and even her angry shouts, they struck a bargain. The Council would find for them hunters and attendants who would accompany them and hunt for them and tend them in every way. And in return, all the dragons had to do was lead them to Kelsingra or where it once had been.

“To this, we can agree,” Mercor had told them gravely.

“They are tricking you!” Malta had objected. “They wish only to be rid of you, so that they can dig up Cassarick more easily and be done with feeding you. Dragons, listen to me, please.”

But the deal had been struck. Kalo had pressed his muddy, inky foot to a piece of parchment held up to him, as if such a ridiculous ceremony could bind one dragon, let alone all them. Malta had gritted her teeth and knotted her fists as the Council proclaimed this was, indeed, the best plan. And Sintara had felt a shred of pity for the young Elderling who stood in such firm opposition to what the dragons themselves had manipulated the humans into offering them. She had hoped Mercor would find a way to have a quiet word with her. But either he did not care to do so or he thought it might endanger his plan. When the Council members left, she went with them, still pink cheeked with fury.

“This is not final!” she had warned them. “You need the signatures of every Council member to make this legal! Don’t think I’ll stand idly by while you do this!”

The glimpse of Malta had made her sad, and no doubt was responsible for her dreams. She was a young Elderling, a human newly changed into that form. She had years of growing and changing ahead of her, if she were to become all that the Elderlings of old had been.

But she would not. Some of the humans looked at her with wonder, but as many regarded her with disdain. She wondered what would become of Malta and Selden and Reyn now that Tintaglia had abandoned the new Elderlings, just as she had abandoned the other dragons. She did not fault Tintaglia for being gone. It was the dragon way to see first to one’s own needs. She had found a mate and better hunting grounds, and eventually she would lay eggs and they would hatch into serpents. The dragon cycle, the true dragon cycle, would begin again as those serpents entered the sea.

But in the years until then, Sintara and the other dragons were all that existed in the Rain Wilds. All of them were creatures from another time, reborn into a world that no longer remembered them. And unfortunately they had returned in dwindled forms that were unfit for this world.

Lords of the Three Realms, they had once called themselves. Sea, land, and sky had all belonged to dragons and their kin. No one had been capable of denying anything to them. They had been masters of all.

And now they were masters of nothing, doomed to mud and carrion and, Sintara did not doubt, a slow death by slog up the river. She closed her eyes again. When the time came, she would go. Not because she was bound by Kalo’s word, but because there was no future in staying here. If she must die as a crippled, broken thing, she would at least take a small measure of life first.