Kase had offered to accompany him in one of the other boats, but with the makeshift paddles they had, Carson had said he would only slow him down. “Use the time while I’m gone to see what you can do about carving out some decent paddles. Davvie and I have some extra spear-and arrowheads. Jess had a good stock of hunting equipment in his chest on board, but don’t raid that just yet. I’ve still got hopes that we’ll find him alive. He’s a pretty savvy riverman. It would take more than a big wave to do him in, I’ll wager.”

Everything had been decided, and some of the keepers were already settling for the night when the dragons had waded out to surround the barge and Baliper had made his outrageous demand.

Now Mercor spoke. “You are free to eat or not eat whatever you desire. As are we. We do devour our dead. It is Baliper’s right to feed on the body of his keeper. Warken should be given to him before his meat rots any more.” The dragon turned his head to look at his own keeper. “Are my words not clear? What is the delay?”

“Mercor, mirror of both the sun and the moon, what you ask is against our custom.” Sylve seemed calm, but her voice trembled a bit. Thymara suspected that she did not often defy her dragon.

The great dragon spun his eyes at her. “I am not asking. To reach Warken’s body, Baliper may have to damage your boat. This, we think, would distress all of you. So, to aid you, we suggest you put his body over the side.”

“It’s what we’d have to do soon in any case,” Captain Leftrin pointed out in a low voice. “We’ve nowhere to bury him. So, the river will have him in any case, and moments after he’s in the river, the dragons will have him. It’s what they do, my friends.”

If he was seeking to console them, Thymara thought, he was doing it in an odd way. There was not a one of them who could look at Warken’s draped form and not imagine herself or himself lying there.

Sintara picked up the image from Thymara’s mind and agilely turned it against her. “If you died tomorrow, which would you wish? To rot in the river, eaten by fishes? Or be devoured by me, and your memories live on in me?”

“I’d be dead and thus I wouldn’t care either way,” Thymara replied brusquely. She felt the dragon was using her against the rest of the keepers and was not entirely comfortable with that.

“Exactly my point,” Sintara purred. “Warken is dead. He no longer cares about anything. Baliper does. Give him to Baliper.”