“Good luck!” he called after her, and “Thanks!” she called back. She saw Tats look at her father in surprise. He turned as if he, too, would go back to say his farewells, but at that moment, the man with the scroll demanded of him, “Do you want your chit or not? You won’t get your supply pack without it!”

“Of course I want it,” Tats declared, all but snatching it out of his hand.

The man shook his head at him. “You’re a fool,” he said quietly. “Look around you, boy. You don’t belong with these others.”

“You don’t know where I belong,” Tats told him fiercely. Then he looked past Thymara and asked, “Where did your father go?”

“Home,” she said. And she avoided his eyes as she stepped up to the man, showed her contract, and said, “I’ll need my supply pack chit now.”

THE SUPPLY PACKS were barely worthy of the name. The canvas bags were roughly sewn and treated with some sort of wax to weatherproof them. Inside were an adequate blanket, a water skin, a cheap metal plate and a spoon, a sheath knife, and packets of crackerbread, dried meat, and dried fruit. “It makes me glad I brought my own supplies from home,” Thymara commented thoughtlessly, and then winced at the look on Tats’s face.

“Better than nothing,” he commented gruffly, and Rapskal, who had attached himself to them like a tick on a monkey, added enthusiastically, “My blanket’s blue. My favorite color. How lucky is that?”

“They’re all blue,” Tats replied, and Rapskal nodded again.

“Like I said. I’m lucky my favorite color is blue.”

Thymara tried not to roll her eyes. It was well known that some who were heavily marked by the Rain Wilds had mental problems as well. Rapskal might be a bit simple, or simply have an aggressively optimistic outlook. Right now, his cheerfulness bolstered her courage even as his chattiness grated on her nerves. She was baffled by how easily he had attached himself to her and Tats. She was accustomed to people approaching her with caution and maintaining a distance. Even the customers who regularly sought out her family at the market kept her at arm’s length. But here was Rapskal, right at her elbow. Every time she turned to glance at him, he grinned like a twig monkey. His dancing blue eyes seemed to say that they shared a secret.

They squatted in a circle on a patch of bare earth, twelve marked Rain Wilders, most in their teens, and Tats. They’d come all the way down to the ground to receive their supply packs. The contents, they’d been told, should sustain them for the first few days of their journey. They’d be accompanied upriver by a barge that would carry several professional hunters with experience in scouting unfamiliar territory and more supplies both for humans and dragons, but each dragon keeper should attempt to learn to subsist on his own resources as well as maintain his dragon’s health as quickly as possible. Thymara was skeptical. As she studied those who would become her companions, she speculated that few of them had ever had to find their own food, let alone consider feeding a dragon. Uneasiness churned in her belly.

“They told us we were to help our dragons find food. But there’s nothing in here that’s useful for hunting,” Tats observed worriedly.

A girl of about twelve edged a bit closer to their group. “I’ve heard they’ll give us fishing tackle and a pole spear before we depart,” she said shyly.

Thymara smiled at her. The girl was skinny, with thin hanks of blond hair dangling from a pink-scaled scalp. Her eyes were a coppery brown, probably on the turn to pure copper, and her mouth was nearly lipless. Thymara glanced at her hands. Perfectly ordinary nails. Her heart went out to the girl abruptly; she’d probably seemed almost normal when she was born and had only started to change as she edged into puberty. That happened sometimes. Thymara was grateful that she had always known what she was; she’d never had real dreams of growing up to marry and have children. This child probably had. “I’m Thymara, and this is Tats. He’s Rapskal. What’s your name?”

“Sylve.” The girl eyed Rapskal, who grinned at her. She edged close to Thymara and asked even more quietly, “Are we the only girls in the group?”

“I thought I saw another girl earlier. About fifteen. Blond.” “I think you might have seen my sister. She came with me, to give me courage.” She cleared her throat. “And to take the advance on my wages home. Money won’t be any good to me where we’re going, and my mother is very sick. It might get her the medicines she needs.” The girl spoke with unselfconscious pride. Thymara nodded. The thought that she and Sylve might be the only females unnerved her a bit. She covered it by grinning and saying, “Well, at least we’ll have each other for intelligent conversation!”