Alise had helped him prepare for just this moment. He opened the shoulder bag again and extracted his copy of their original contract. He unrolled it and feigned reading through it, his brow wrinkled as if puzzled. Then he looked at Trader Polsk over the document. He made his voice almost apologetic. “Nothing in our contract specified that a report was due to the Council on our return.”

There. As if on cue, a man at the end of the table drew a sheaf of papers toward him and began to leaf through them. Leftrin tried to save him the trouble. “If you read the contract, Trader Polsk, you’ll find that my crew and I, and the keepers and the hunters you hired, have all fulfilled each designated task as negotiated. The dragons were removed from the area. The creatures were fed and tended on the journey. We found an appropriate area for their resettlement, and there they are settled.” He cleared his throat. “We’ve fulfilled our end of the bargain. Now it’s your turn. The final payments are due.” He shrugged his heavy shoulders. “That’s all.”

“It can scarcely be all!” This came not from Trader Polsk but from a younger man seated at the far end of the table. When he turned his face, the light of the hanging globes danced along a fine line of orange scaling on his brows. “This is no sort of a report at all! How can we be sure of a thing you’ve said? Where is the hunter Jess Torkef who was to accompany your expedition and represent the Councils’ best interest? He was to take notes and make charts as the expedition advanced. Why hasn’t he accompanied you here today?”

Exactly the question Leftrin had been waiting to hear. “Jess Torkef is dead.” Leftrin delivered the news without regret but took close interest in the expressions it startled from the various Council members. As Alise had told him to expect, a woman Trader in a dark-green robe looked stricken; she attempted to exchange a look with the orange-scaled fellow, but he was staring at Leftrin in horror. He paled as Leftrin added, “I cannot be responsible for anything that Torkef agreed to; his contract is voided by his death.” He paused only a moment before revealing, “One distressing thing I will disclose. Jess Torkef died trying to kill a dragon. He intended to butcher her and sell the parts of her body. To the Chalcedeans.”