Please send a bird back to me with a note to let me know of Reyall’s safe arrival. If you would, let us try it on one of the swift pigeons he is bringing with him. It would be particularly interesting to me if you sent me a duplicate note on a regular bird, releasing both at dawn of the same day. I wish to see if our efforts to breed for speed are yielding a measurable advantage to our birds. As for the kings, large and lovely as they are, I have had no success with them as messengers. They are too heavy-bodied to be fast, and many of them seem indifferent about returning to the home coop. They are, I fear, condemning themselves to be meat birds.

Erek

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHOICES

It was strange to move upriver again, as if nothing had happened. Thymara stood on the Tarman’s deck, the tool in her hand forgotten, and watched the jungly riverbank slowly slide by her. When she was in her own little boat, she’d never really had a chance to look down at the shore like this and see how the banks of the river changed as the hours of the day passed by. She missed being in her small boat but was almost glad it was gone. If it still existed, she’d have been paired with someone who wasn’t Rapskal, and it hurt to imagine that.

Counting Carson’s boat, they were reduced to five small boats, and only three had a full complement of gear. The Tarman had shipped extra oars for all the boats, she had discovered to her relief. Even so, the keepers had to rotate their days on the water. And when they were not in the small boats, they served on board the barge, doing whatever the captain asked them to do.

The expedition was now short on everything; knives, bows and arrows, spears, and fishing tackle had been lost, not to mention blankets, spare clothing, and the few personal items that each keeper had brought along. Greft had repeatedly congratulated himself on how well he had stowed his gear. It made Thymara want to hit him. It was sheer luck that his boat had wedged in the same tangle where the Bingtown man washed ashore. If it hadn’t, he would have been as beggared as the rest of them. As it was, he now functioned as a hunter alongside Carson. Those two boats had departed at dawn, with Davvie helping Carson and Nortel riding along with Greft. She was just as glad; Nortel had come to her with a bruised face and muttered an apology for “treating her like trade goods” and then walked away. She wondered if the words were his or Tats’s, and if Tats hoped to gain anything by forcing Nortel to apologize to her.