Baliper was waiting. The body slid out from under its draping and as it entered the river, the dragon ducked his head and seized it. He lifted Warken, his head and feet dangling out either side of his mouth, and carried him off. The other dragons, she noted, did not follow him, but turned away and half swam, half waded back to the shallows at the edge of the river. Baliper disappeared upriver into the darkness with his keeper’s body. So it was not a simple devouring of meat that humans would otherwise discard. It meant something, not just to Warken’s dragon, but to all of them. It was important enough to them that when Baliper’s demand had been initially refused, they had massed and made it plain that they would not let him be denied.

The other keepers reminded her of the dragons. They dispersed quietly from their places along the railings. No one wept, but it did not mean no one wished to. Seeing Warken dead, really dead, had brought home the reality of Rapskal’s absence. He was gone, and the chances were that if she saw him again he would be like Warken, battered and bloated and still.

The keepers congregated in small groups. Jerd was with Greft, of course. Sylve was with Harrikin and Lecter. Boxter and Kase, the cousins, moved as one as they always did. Nortel trailed after them. And she stood apart from all of them, as she so often seemed to do. The only one who had refused her dragon. The only one who never seemed to know what rules the group had discarded and which ones they kept. Her back ached abominably, she was river scalded and insect bitten, and the loneliness that filled her up from the inside threatened to crack her body. She missed Alise’s company, but now that they were back on the barge and she had her captain’s attention, she probably wouldn’t want to spend time with Thymara.

And she missed Rapskal, with a keenness that shocked her.

“Are you all right?”

She turned, startled to discover Tats standing at her side. “I suppose I am. That was a hard, strange thing, wasn’t it?”

“In some ways, it was the simplest solution. And Lecter had spent a lot of time with Warken; they partnered in the boats most days. So I’m willing to believe that he knew what Warken would have wanted.”

“I’m sure he did,” Thymara replied quietly.

They stood for a time, staring over the river. The dragons had dispersed. Thymara could still feel, like a fire radiating cold, Sintara’s anger with her. She didn’t care. Her skin hurt all over, the injury between her shoulders burned, and she didn’t belong anywhere.

“I can’t even go home.”