“It’s a bit late to try to charm us with praise,” Icefyre observed with amusement.

“Who took your family?” Tintaglia was curious. The bone was showing in the boy’s leg. He wouldn’t survive.

“The Duke’s men. The Duke of Chalced. They said we had to bring back dragon parts for the Duke. He needs medicine made from dragon parts to live. If we brought back blood or scales or liver or a dragon’s eye, then the Duke would make us rich forever. But if we don’t . . .” The boy looked down at his leg. He stared at it for a time, and then something in his face changed. He looked up at Tintaglia. “We’re already dead. All of us.”

“Yes,” she said, but before the word settled in the boy’s mind, Icefyre had reached out and closed his jaws on the lad’s torso. It happened as quickly as serpent strike.

Fresh meat. No sense letting him start to rot like the others.

The black dragon threw back his head, engulfed the rest of the boy’s body, swallowed, and moved away to the next pile of carcasses.

Day the 29th of the Still Moon

Year the 7th of the Independent Alliance of Traders

From Reyall, Acting Keeper of the Birds, Bingtown

To Kim, Keeper of the Birds, Cassarick

Greetings, Kim,

I have been given the task of conveying to you a complaint that has been received from several of our clients. They allege that confidential messages received show signs of tampering, even though the wax plugs of the message cylinders appear intact. In two cases, a sealing wax stamp was cracked on a highly confidential scroll, and in a third, the wax seal was found in pieces inside the message cylinder, and the message scroll appeared to have been spindled crookedly, as if someone had opened the cylinder, read the messages, and then replaced them, resealing the cylinders with bird keeper wax. These complaints come from three separate Traders and involve messages received from Trader Candral of Cassarick.

No official investigation has been requested yet. I have begged them to allow me to contact you and request that you speak with Trader Candral and ask for a demonstration of the sort of sealing wax and impression stamp that he is using for his messages. It is my hope and the hope of my masters here in Bingtown that this is merely a matter of inferior, old, or brittle sealing wax being used rather than a case of a keeper tampering with messages. Nevertheless, we would request that you scrutinize any journeymen or apprentice keepers who have come into your employ in the last year.

It is with great regret that we ask this and hope that you will not take it amiss. My master directs me to say that we have the greatest confidence in the integrity of the Cassarick bird keepers and look forward to putting this allegation to rest.

The favor of a swift response is requested.