“You can’t possibly understand.” Alise’s voice was strained as she controlled herself. “You’re half a child still, with no experience of the world save the forest you grew up in. If you’d lived in Bingtown, if you had seen the stream of Elderling treasures and artifacts that passed through the market, to be scattered and lost in the wide world . . . Wondrous things, treated as novelties to be enjoyed only by the very wealthy and collectors. Half the time, the people who ended up owning those things cared nothing for where they came from, only that they could astonish others with a new possession.”

Thymara stood silent against the onslaught of words. Her face remained impervious. Tats saw that rattle Alise, heard a small shaking in her voice as she spoke on in the silence.

“I’ve studied the Elderlings for years, working with the scattered bits that the ravagers and scavengers left for the scholars to try to interpret. Time after time, I’ve been frustrated with a few pages from a manuscript, a section of a long tapestry that obviously celebrated an important event, or a few tools that, if I had known where they were found, I might discover their purpose. We have a chance, and I fear it will be a very brief chance, before the hordes will descend on Kelsingra and reduce it to stripped stone and rubble. Will you start to destroy it before they even get here? Care you nothing for your heritage?”

A silence followed her words. Tats felt empty. This is a day for things to break, he thought. My heart. The fellowship of the folk who had come here together. We all move apart from one another today.

Alise spoke to the keepers from a shared history, one in which his people barely mattered. He had no Rain Wild ancestry to claim. That he was becoming as scaled as the rest of them and taking on the attributes of an Elderling body was due to the affection of his dragon. Alise’s words reminded him that he’d come to this expedition as an outsider, the sole keeper who had not been marked heavily by the Rain Wilds. He felt he had no right to speak, and then a new pang smote him as he wondered if that was why Thymara had chosen Rapskal over him. Was that shared background more important to her than their years of companionship?