BRASHEN TRELL: Captain of the Paragon out of Bingtown.

CLEF: Ship’s boy on the Paragon, former slave.

DETOZI: Keeper of the messenger birds at Trehaug.

DUKE OF CHALCED: Chalced’s dictator, elderly and ailing.

EREK: Keeper of the messenger birds at Bingtown.

MALTA KHUPRUS: The Elderling “queen,” resides in Trehaug. Married to Reyn Khuprus.

PARAGON: A liveship. Helped escort the sea serpents up the river to the cocooning grounds.

SELDEN VESTRIT: A young Elderling; Malta’s brother and Althea’s nephew.

SINAD ARICH: Chalcedean merchant who strikes a deal with Leftrin.

Day the 5th of the Prayer Moon

Year the 6th of the Independent Alliance of Traders

From Erek, Keeper of the Birds, Bingtown

To Detozi, Keeper of the Birds, Trehaug

A message from Trader Jurden to be delivered to the Trehaug Rain Wild Traders’ Council, regarding an order for Sevirian cutlery and the unfortunate shortage that has caused an unexpected and substantial increase in the price for it.

Detozi,

Greetings! The king pigeons have proven disappointing for speed and homing ability, but their swift breeding habits and quick growth to size make me wonder if there is an opportunity to create a supply of food birds that might be especially suitable to raising in the Rain Wilds. Your thoughts on this?

Erek

PROLOGUE

The humans were agitated. Sintara sensed their darting, stinging thoughts, as annoying as a swarm of biting insects. The dragon wondered how humans had ever managed to survive when they could not keep their thoughts to themselves. The irony was that despite spraying out every fancy that passed through their small minds, they didn’t have the strength of intellect to sense what their fellows were thinking. They tottered through their brief lives, misunderstanding one another and almost every other creature in the world. It had shocked her the first time she realized that the only way they could communicate with one another was to make noises with their mouths and then to guess what the other human meant by the noises it made in response. “Talking” they called it.

For a moment, she stopped blocking the barrage of squeaking and tried to determine what had agitated the dragon keepers today. As usual, there was no coherence to their concerns. Several were worried about the copper dragon who had fallen ill. It was not as if they could do much about it; she wondered why they were flapping about it instead of tending to their duties for the other dragons. She was hungry, and no one had brought her anything today, not even a fish.