Rain. Cold sleeting rain suddenly spattered on her back with the force of a shower of pebbles. Sintara’s eyes flew open, the dream and the respite it had brought her shattered. In the next moment, the cold water was coursing down her flanks and sides. All around her in the darkness, dragons shifted and reluctantly huddled closer to one another. Sorrow vied with fury in her. “Kelsingra,” she promised herself aloud. “Kelsingra.”

In the darkness, the voices of the other dragons echoed hers.

Day the 17th of the Greening Moon

Year the 5th of the Independent Alliance of Traders

From Erek, Keeper of the Birds, Bingtown

To Detozi, Keeper of the Birds, Trehaug

In the sealed scroll case, a letter from the Bingtown Traders’ Council to the Rain Wild Traders’ Councils of Trehaug and Cassarick, suggesting that the Elderling Selden might go on a journey to discover the whereabouts of Tintaglia and persuade her to return and once more engage in the care of the young dragons.

Detozi,

I take up pen on behalf of your nephew Reyall to assure you that the Three Ships girl Karlin is indeed of good character, being industrious, dutiful to her parents, and able to both read and write. Although he is young to form such an attachment, I am willing to consent to my apprentice becoming engaged to her, so long as he pledges to me that they will not marry before he reaches his journeyman standing. I am pleased to give this testimonial to Karlin’s character and truly believe that in every way she can be as good a wife to him as any girl that is Trader born and bred. It is not, of course, a trivial decision, but I will remark that she comes from a family of five healthy children, and that both her sisters have wed and produced fine healthy offspring. In these times, a lad could do far worse than Karlin.

Erek

Chapter Six Thymara’s Decision

It was unusual for her mother to greet them with a smile on their return from their daily gathering. Even more unusual was for her to be fairly bursting with enthusiasm to speak to them. Thymara and her father were scarcely inside the door with their baskets before her mother spoke. Her eyes were bright with hope. “We’ve had an offer for Thymara.”

For an instant, both the young woman and her father froze as they were. Thymara could barely make sense of the words. An offer? For her? At sixteen years of age, she was long past the age when most Rain Wild girls were engaged. She knew that in some places in the world she would still be considered little more than a child. In others, she would be seen as just ripening for marriage. But in the Rain Wilds, folk did not live as long as other people. They knew that if a family bloodline was to continue, they’d best have their offspring spoken for as children, wed young as soon as they were fecund, and with child within the year. Even if a girl came from a poor family, if her looks were passable, she’d be spoken for by ten. Even the ugly girls had prospects by twelve.

Unless they were like Thymara, never meant to survive at all, let alone wed and produce children. Invisible to some folk, barely tolerated by others. Yet, here was her mother, eyes shining, saying there had been an offer for her. It was too strange. To accept a marriage offer when children were forbidden to her? It made no sense. Who would make such an offer and why would her mother even consider it?

“A marriage offer for Thymara? From whom?” Her father’s voice was thick with disbelief. Foreboding grew in Thymara’s heart as she studied her mother’s face. Her smile was thin. She did not look at either of them as she crouched by the baskets and began to select which items in them would become their evening meal. She spoke to the food they had gathered. “I said we’d had an offer for Thymara, Jerup. Not a marriage offer.”

“What sort of an offer, then? From whom?” her father demanded. A storm cloud of anger threatened in his words.

Her mother kept her aplomb. She didn’t look up from her task. “An offer of useful employment and a life of her own, apart from us in our declining years. As for ‘from whom,’ it comes directly from the Rain Wild Traders’ Council. So it’s nothing to sniff at, Jerup. It’s a wonderful opportunity for Thymara.”

Her father shifted his glance to Thymara and waited for her to speak. It was no secret in their little family that her mother worried constantly about her “declining years.” Plainly she believed that if they could shed responsibility for Thymara’s upkeep, they could save more for their old age. Thymara wasn’t certain that were so; she toiled every day alongside her father. Much of what he carried home, Thymara had harvested from the highest reaches of the tallest branches, sunny places where no one else dared climb. Would her mother think it such a relief when her father’s baskets were lighter each day? And if she were gone, who would do the day-today chores for them as their bodies aged and grew feeble?