When he spoke again, he sounded calmer. “Oh, it may happen that Kelsingra is found and we establish a settlement there, but not the way he visualizes it. For one thing, he hasn’t got enough people, and too few of them are female. He’s barely got the population to start a village, let alone a city. And Rain Wilders, as I’m sure you know, don’t breed easily. The babies who manage to be born sometimes live less than a year. And a Rain Wilder is an old man at forty.” Carson scratched his scaly cheek above his beard. “So, even if a big discovery does persuade a boatload of new settlers to come, the new will likely outnumber the old, and they’ll have their say about how things are done. And while Greft and the other keepers may discover riches, well, you can’t eat Elderling artifacts. Don’t we all know that! As long as the Elderling treasures remained in the Rain Wilds, it did no one any good. We had to ship them out to where people could come to bargain for them. That’s why Bingtown is the big trading town and Trehaug isn’t; if we didn’t trade, we’d starve. And if we do find Kelsingra, and there is treasure there, the Traders driving the deals for those things will know that better than anyone. Men experienced at squeezing every bit of fat out of a deal will come. King Greft would have to sit at their bargaining table and play by their rules. Still. By the time Davvie’s a full man, there might be a future for him in Kelsingra.”

He cleared his throat and poked another dry stick into his firepot. Sedric was silent, picturing Greft or any of the keepers at a trading table with Hest. He’d eat them alive and pick his teeth with their bones.

A fat silver fish leaped suddenly out of the water after a low buzzing insect. It fell back into its world with a splash, and Carson laughed aloud. “Listen to me, spinning dreams and tales as if I were a minstrel. If anything of Kelsingra remains, and if we find it…”

“What if we find nothing?”