But if he thought his brushing touch had satisfied her, he was wrong. When she opened her eyes to look at him, her gaze was wild and hungry. “Don’t stop,” she warned him.

“Alise, are you cert—”

He didn’t even complete the sentence. She stopped his mouth with hers, and her groping hand found him and made her desire plain.

ALISE OPENED HER other hand. The locket with Hest inside it fell, to the bedding, to the floor. It could have fallen into the river itself. She didn’t care.

Day the 25th 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

Enclosed, part one of a missive from the Bingtown Traders’ Council to the Rain Wild Traders’ Councils at Trehaug and Cassarick, being the public accounting of the Bingtown Traders’ expenses and income for the year, for purposes of shared taxation. Three copies of each accounting to be sent by bird, and one by ship.

Detozi,

I am sure all are anxiously awaiting to hear how our taxes will rise yet again this year! With Bingtown still, in some places, rebuilding public works and the Market damaged by the Chalcedeans, and both Cassarick and Trehaug needing funds for the shoring up of the excavations, I wonder if taxes will ever go down to what they were five years ago. My father is on the mend at last, but his recent illness has renewed my parents’ anxiety about my lack of a wife and children. Silly me, to think that might be MY business!

Erek

CHAPTER ELEVEN

REVELATIONS

Some time short of dawn, she’d wakened him. “We should go back to our own beds,” she whispered.

He gave a long sigh of resignation. “In a minute,” he lied. He stroked her hair, twined a lock of it around his finger. It tugged gently, pleasantly against her scalp.

“I had a dream,” she heard herself say.

“Did you? So did I. It was nice.”

Alise smiled into the darkness. “I dreamed of Kelsingra. It was a strange dream, Leftrin. I think I was a dragon in my dream. Because I saw the city, well, as if it were small and I were looking down on it. I’ve never even imagined seeing a city that way. All the rooftops and spires, the roads set out like veins in a leaf, and the river was the biggest silver road of all. The river was so wide, but the city was still on both sides of it. You know, in my dream, the city looked as if it had been planned to be seen from above. Like a strange form of art…”